Accounting for the Value of Time in Public Standpost Design
Creators: name: White, Gary J.
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 1995

description: About one-half the population of developing countries lacks a safe and adequate drinking water supply. This reality leads to the death of more than 10 million people annually and causes hundreds of millions more to fall ill. Water-related disease and illness constitute the world's most severe health problem and exact a heavy toll in terms of human suffering. Recently, demographic trends have caused an increased awareness of and response to the water supply problems of peri-urban areas in developing countries. These trends show peri-urban areas growing faster than rural and urban areas in the developing countries. Of the 24 cities expected to exceed 10million inhabitants by the year 2000, 18 will be in developing countries. In Latin America, 72% of the population lives in urban and peri-urban areas; this percentage is projected to increase to 85% by 2025. The people of the rural areas facing economic difficulties are attracted to large population centers by the potential for employment and improved economic conditions. However, this search for better conditions is often in vain, with migrants settling in the informal, peri-urban areas surrounding the major cities. The water supply problems facing peri-urban areas are complex compared to the rural areas where people can almost always resort to collecting water from a spring, river or stream. These are usually not options in metropolitan areas because of the heavy contamination from untreated sewage in the waterways. Piped water to homes is not a realistic alternative since squatters usually have no legal claims to the land and are reluctant to pay for any improvements. Public water utilities already facing capital shortages are reluctant to invest in expanding distribution systems to provide house connections for these areas. Costs are rarely recovered in such instances since users often feel that it is the government's responsibility to provide water service free or at subsidized rates. Since house connections provided by public utilities are not a realistic alternative, settlers in peri-urban areas are usually forced to turn to the private sector for water. Supplies of water can come from private wells, bottled water companies, public standposts, vendors and other sources. One of the most common sources of water for people living in peri-urban areas is the public standpost. These standposts may be private ventures, they may be owned and operated by government entities or, in some cases, owned by government entities but licensed to individuals for operation. While some standposts operated by the public sector may not charge for water, this is the exception, with users normally paying a flat monthly rate for the right to use a standpost or, more commonly, paying based on the volume of water collected. The critical difference between house taps and public standposts is that individuals must go to the public standpost, collect the water, and return home with it. Whether each individual household collects water on its own or whether it pays to have water delivered by a vendor, a considerable amount of time and effort is expended on this daily task.