Domestic Wastewater Management in a Rural Community in Colombia

This article describes a case study of a process of technology transfer for the collection, transportation, treatment, and final disposal of domestic wastewater in the rural community of La Florida, located near Pereira, Colombia. An unconventional wastewater-treatment system, consisting of a gritremoval chamber, three septic tanks, three up-flow anaerobic filters, and seven subsurface-flow constructed wetlands, was selected, designed, built, and implemented with the active participation of the community and local institutions. In order to do this, the knowledge dialogue model (KD) was used. The KD model was developed by the Research and Development Institute in Water Supply, Environmental Sanitation, and Water Resources Conservation (Cinara) of the Universidad del Valle in Colombia. Despite the participatory approach and the application of integrated water-resource-management principles, the unwillingness of the community and the participating institutions to establish a long-term alliance once the infrastructure was built affected the system’s sustainability. For similar initiatives to be successful, an institutional framework oriented toward sustainability must be in place as well as the political willingness to endorse these endeavors.