Diaw, MT; Cissé-Faye, S; Gaye, CB; Niang, S; Pouye, A; Campos, LC; Taylor, RG; (2020) On-site sanitation density and groundwater quality: Evidence from remote sensing and in situ observations in the thiaroye aquifer, Senegal. Journal of Water Sanitation and Hygiene for Development , 10 (4) pp. 927-939. 10.2166/washdev.2020.162.

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Abstract

© 2020 The Authors. In rapidly urbanising low-income towns and cities, there remains an absence of scientific evidence and regulatory structures to sustain the quality and quantity of groundwater used for low-cost water supplies and to reconcile this with continued use of the subsurface for low-cost sanitation. Here, we analyse the relationship between the density of on-site sanitation and shallow groundwater quality in the Thiaroye aquifer of Quaternary sands in Dakar, Senegal. On-site sanitation was mapped using object-oriented classification and visual interpretation of high-resolution, optical satellite images and ground-truthing surveys. Groundwater quality was assessed over a three-year period (2017–2019) from a network of 61 sources comprising boreholes, dug-wells, hand tubewells and piezometers. More than 253,000 on-site sanitation facilities are identified over an area of 520 km2 with densities ranging from 1 to 70 per hectare. A moderate, statistically significant linear relationship (r2 = 0.55, p « 0.01) is found between the density of on-site sanitation facilities and nitrate concentrations in sampled groundwater sources. Groundwater contamination beyond the WHO drinking-water guideline value (50 mg/L) occurs where densities of on-site sanitation facilities exceed 4 (±4) per hectare, a threshold commonly surpassed in peri-urban areas underlain by the Thiaroye aquifer of Dakar.

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