Community based autonomous management of small water supply

Abstract

While the improvement of management efficiency through integration and wide-area collaboration is an urgent issue, in regions such as Hokkaido, where the population density is quite low, there are some situations in which it is difficult to improve management efficiency. In such areas, a drastically different approach regarding management organization should be considered. This paper introduces a new regional water supply system, based on a survey of the current situation and practical approaches, as a model for the future of water supply systems in rural areas. A survey of the actual situation in Hokkaido confirmed that the individual facilities and operational forms of the existing community-based water management system (CBWMS), as well as the support systems of municipalities, are diverse. On the other hand, the survey also revealed that many of them have achieved low-cost and easy operation, based on high-quality water sources and the ability of farmers, but have problems in water quality risk management and asset information management. Based on these CBWMS characteristics, Furano City in Hokkaido and the authors have been working with local high school students to create a support system for CBWMS. Through five years of practice, we have learned that: the information created by the high school students is sufficiently valuable for the local community; the local high school is a place to nurture the next generation of leaders in the community, and activities by high school students to learn about the community can contribute to the revitalization of the community; and, the network of local high school graduates can be utilized to build a local network for water supply restructuring. We estimated that the personnel and costs required to develop a similar support system in another location would be as follows: the initial cost is approximately 73,000 yen (if PCs are already available at the local high school), the annual cost is approximately 51,000 yen, and the manpower required for the cooperation of an outside researcher, such as the author is approximately 6 man-days/year. As described in this paper, the establishment of a support system in cooperation with local high schools, as well as a support system by municipalities in a reasonable manner will be important to support the sustainability of small-scale water supply systems in the future.