Greywater Project in Villages 3 & 6 in Azraq Refugee Camp (Jordan)
Background
Azraq Refugee camp opened in April 2014, and is home to more than 36,000 Syrian refugees, living in four villages. The camp was designed and constructed incorporating some of the many lessons learned from Za’atari camp, the largest Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. One of the key differences between the two camps was the design of the communal WASH Blocks. In Za’atari, the WASH Blocks were very large and were designed to cover the needs of hundreds of people surrounding the blocks. In Azraq, the WASH Blocks were designed very differently, with twelve shelters in each plot served by two twin WASH Blocks (comprising a washing area and a toilet) set on either end of the plot, with male facilities at one end of the plot and women’s facilities at the other. As Azraq evolved, households gradually stopped using the communal WASH blocks in Azraq, and began bathing in their own shelters. This was increasingly evident in the large number of greywater channels across the camps, and pools of water outside shelters. These pools posed large risks in terms of public health, particularly to children. To address this, UNICEF developed the concept of the greywater project in 2016 and in partnership with ACF, conducted a pilot household greywater project in 48 shelters in March 2016 in villages 3 and 6, the first villages established in the camp.
What was involved?
The pilot project involved the connection of each shelter to a main pipeline along each plot draining to the holding tanks under the WASH blocks. An important component of the project was mobilisation on the importance of the project and messages on how to ensure the integrity of the connections and avoid blockages. For the pilot, the families were provided with the necessary technical support, training and materials, and the works were overseen by ACF. A few months after the pilot was completed, and during the peak summer months when water demand was at its highest, all 48 households were visited to gather feedback and assess the functionality of the system. The feedback from the connected households was very positive and requests to expand the project across the whole camp were regularly received from the community gatherings.
In February 2017, a Comprehensive Child Focused Assessment (CCFA)[1] was conducted in Azraq refugee camp to collect information on the access to, and utilisation of, a range of UNICEF-supported services, including the communal WASH facilities. The study found that although the majority of the refugees use the WASH blocks for a wide range of functions, only 8 per cent of women and girls stated that they used the bathing facilities, citing concerns over privacy and dignity. This represents an enormous reduction in usage rates compared to the previous CCFA, which was conducted in 2015.
On the basis of the CCFA results, and the sharp increase in the number of pools and channels observed around the camp, the project was expanded across Villages 3 and 6, where most of the population live, and in consultation with the community leaders and representatives. These villages were first prioritised as kitchenettes had been installed in these shelters and the shelters connected to the electricity network, which resulted in the purchase and installation of washing machines, with large quantities of greywater generated. Households constructed internal bathing areas with the water draining into excavated pools outside of their shelters, or into channels. With some modifications to the design (to accommodate blackwater in the event that households constructed toilets in their shelters), the greywater project commenced in late 2017, and by late February 2018, the work was completed with almost 5,000 shelters connected, through two NGO partners, ACF and ACTED.
While a voluntary approach was supported through community mobilisation, provisions for paid volunteers were made to ensure that vulnerable households (with no available members to engage in manual labour) were also included. The feedback to date has been overwhelmingly positive, with a focus on the stark improvement in the environmental conditions around the shelters, and with fewer insects, in addition to the privacy and dignity concerns. As the system is now operational, there has been a clear increase (almost doubled) in the volume of wastewater collected in the tanks from Villages 3 and 6, and this figure is likely to increase further with the approaching peak water demand during the summer months.
The graphs below illustrate the increase in wastewater collected from tanks in Villages 3 and 6, where the greywater system is now complete, compared to the volumes collected from Villages 2 and 5 (with no greywater), for the same period.
[1] Comprehensive Child Focused Assessment Azraq Refugee Camp, Jordan, February 2017