Water Quality and Sanitation in Nepal

The MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) has been working in Nepal since 1999 to help provide clean drinking water and improved sanitation to those in need. This is our most popular project. More than 30 Masters of Engineering students, MIT Sloan Business School students, MIT faculty members, the MIT New Office photojournalist and even several student from Stanford and Berkeley have traveled to Nepal as part of teams involved in this project. Our various Nepal thesis and team projects have included assessing water quality and water/sanitation surveys at project sites, evaluation and testing of existing technologies, researching, designing and developing low-cost point-of-use household water treatment technologies and business analysis and implementation of our ideas and technologies. Our field sites include the Kathmandu Valley, the hills region in and around Tansen, and the Terai Region (Kapilvastu, Rupendehi, Nawalparasi, Parsa, Bara, Rautahat, Siraha, and Saptari Districts).

Investigations in Nepal fall into several broad categories, as follows:

(*) Water quality and site investigations (drinking water, wastewater, watershed)
(*) Household drinking water treatment and safe storage systems for microbial and/or arsenic contamination
(*) Wastewater treatment and on-site sanitation systems investigations
(*) Household drinking water technology implementation and business investigations