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Fresh outlook for Nauru's water

Nauru is pushing ahead with plans to deal with one of the nation's most significant development hurdles, water and sanitation. - ABC

Nauru is pushing ahead with plans to deal with one of the nation's most significant development hurdles, water and sanitation.

In February, the tiny Pacific nation released its first National Water and Sanitation Policy to address the current threats to water and look at possible improvements.

Haseldon Buraman, Nauru's National Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Coordinator, says Nauru has had to deal with the same issues as other atoll islands where "water is very scarce and very limited."

"The policy itself will actually align these issues in place," Mr Buraman told Radio Australia's program.

"Who is going to be responsible and doing what and how to more properly manage our water resource."

During a three year drought from 1998 to 2000, Nauru's desalination plant went out of service and the people were forced to rely on ground water, with little knowledge of what the water contained.

In 2010 it was discovered that ground water was highly contaminated with faecal matter after a survey of the island was carried out with the assistance of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.

Mr Buraman says standard septic tanks and dry composting toilets are just being introduced now.

While clean water is now easier to access, Mr Buraman says other problems arise as a result of new methods of water sanitation.

"Nauru used to heavily rely on imported water, but now with the technologies coming in where they've got this compact sized reverse osmosis, the problem is they're consuming a major chunk of our energy produced through our desal generators."


- ABC

© ABC 2012

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