Korean potable water system project : lessons from experience

joined CARE in l977 to sponsor a piped water system (PWS) project for 6 South Korean communities. This report, based on interviews with PWS operators and users, evaluates the project's impact and lessons for the future. The project was generally unsuccessful, failing to achieve any of its objectives completely. Only four of six targeted PWS's were fully operational by the project completion date (1979) and two of these were technically deficient, failing to treat water sufficiently or to locate adequate water sources. In addition, only one village committee had been formed to operate their PWS system; the public education program was poorly conceived and managed; a lack of baseline data made it impossible to measure the project's impact on community health; and a user requirement to pay for connections and meters put the system beyond the reach of many poor households. There was also an indirect negative effect: runoff from flush toilets (the installation of which the project facilitated) created a potential for transmitting waterborne diseases. The project's major shortcoming, however, was that its design lacked any features allowing it to be replicated nationally or even regionally. On the positive side, the project did save time and make life easier for users, especially women. Chief lessons learned and accepted by the Government of Korea were that PWS project priority need not necessarily go to the poorest towns since these often experience shrinking populations and prefer traditional water sources; PWS's should be accessible to the poor but without subsidization; project design should entail a regional or national focus to serve as a model; and evironmental assessments should accompany all PWS's. Using identical data but focusing on the piped-water supply throughout all of Korea, an attached second evaluation recommends, among other things, servicing urban industrial and polluted rural areas before those with traditional, but sanitary water supplies. Other recommendations are included in the appendices.