Stakeholders

WATER SUPPLY AND PLACEMAKING

PROVIDING THE COMMUNITY WITH A RELIABLE WATER SOURCE AND A VIBRANT COMMUNAL SPACE THROUGH AN INTEGRATED COMMUNITY-CENTRED PLACEMAKING APPROACH

WHAT?

Our participatory feldwork has ‘dug deep’ and discovered the signifcant benefts for residents of a 24 hour water supply system, particularly for women and girls. It has also identifed the social capital generated by women who tend to gather around water points. A visible, locally designed public space adjacent to the Creek, with a decorated header tank at its centre, could help to catalyse the transformation of a neglected part of the community. At such a visible location, it could create an attractive focal point for those entering the site and improve pride and a sense of place in the community.

WHY?

From an early stage, informal interview and site transect walks revealed a low level of on-site potable water storage across the site. Through house visits in the municipal bungalows, apartments and slum dwellings, we learnt that all houses appear to have direct connections to the intermittent water supply system. However, we saw evidence of only very basic water storage across the site, such as barrels and simple containers within properties which could be used for washing and cooking. Informal interviews showed that it is typically the women in the community who are responsible for flling these. Formal interviews with Imagine Panaji confrmed that the site receives around two hours of piped water supply each day from the Water Resources Department, in common with most areas of Panaji and Taleigao.

Interviews with young women in the community indicated that providing a 24hr supply could transform their livelihoods, which are currently structured around the availability of water for

Figure 12.01 - A view of the Creek. 2hrs in the morning or evening. A 24hr piped supply could open up a range of social and economic opportunities, and it is well recognised in the development sector that “time savings associated with small piped systems and the increased water available... [allow]... women to enhance existing activities and initiate new enterprises” (Van Houweling et al., 2012).

“A water tank would solve lots of our issues - we’d be able to plan our day in a diferent way!” - Teenage girls from Camrabhat

Natural capital in the community is eroded and this is particularly linked to open defecation and poor solid waste management. Through our transect and guided walks, we have observed that illegal solid waste disposal is most acute in areas which are not overlooked by houses or buildings, particularly around hidden areas of the Creek and windowless walls of the apartment. There appears to be an observed correlation between the visibility of spaces and the rate of littering which is refected by academic research (Bateson et al., 2015). A solution that provides 24hr access to water, and helps to generate and sustain socially productive public spaces, especially for women, could have a positive impact on the community’s livelihoods.

HOW? Integrating the principles of placemaking

As our end goal was to implement initiatives that responded to the needs of the community, we worked in collaboration with them to defne how they would envision a public shared space, using the principles of placemaking. Placemaking is a human centred design methodology based on the theory of space defned by Canter 1977 and Relph 1976 (De Aguila et al., 2019). It considers place as a combination of materiality, meaning and practises and captures the assets, activities and functions of the community that the public space is built around (Cilliers et al., 2014). In our case, social interaction and water collection were some of the key activities and functions of the community that we wanted to build around, and these in turn help to build internal social capital. Observations indicate that many of the women in the community choose to use outdoor or shared spaces for washing and these turn into natural meeting places. Through a tactical intervention, we could help transform a neglected part of the site into an area that is “made by people doing things according to the meaning they might wish a place to evoke” (Cilliers et al., 2014).

PROPOSAL

The proposal is to use a water header tank as a catalyst for wider spatial change. From population of 770 people, assuming a percapita demand of 150 litres/day, a header tank of approximately 115 cumecs could meet the water supply needs of the entire community. It is proposed this is of a standard reinforced concrete construction, and raised at least 5 metres of the ground. Our engagement suggested that only the Water Resources Department (WRD) has the resources and skills for designing and constructing such a large piece of infrastructure. The run-of water from these outdoor spaces is likely to be contaminated with organics and have a high alkalinity from washing products. Therefore, as part of the wider landscaping around the tank, a run-of water garden down to the Creek would be constructed, within natural fltration using alkaline resistant plants and native species such as Colocasia, Canna Indica and Vertiva Grass. This would be co-designed with close collaboration of local activists and the community, who have experience of using native planting to create green spaces in the area. The proposal would include an innovative waste centralisation system, which was suggested during a participatory workshop with members of the community, and confrmed during prototyping with civil activists. This would be designed to be in a highly visible and accessible part of the site for municipal waste collection trucks. Children, in particular, would be involved in designing and decorating these to ensure segregation is as clear as possible. Many members of the community work for the municipality in waste collection, segregation and composting, and thus skills in wet and dry waste processing are ready to be harnessed. It is proposed a small sub-group of the St Inez Creek Welfare Association is formed, with responsibility for maintaining the space and monitoring the performance of the water supply system. This could in turn create opportunities for employment in the community.

Figure 12.02 - Stakeholder overview.

Figure 12.03 - Children would co-design the green spaces.

Engagement with Smart City Fellows indicated that a commercial drinking water dispenser could be attached to the header tank, could be a viable opportunity to generate on-going revenue from sales. They suggested that such schemes are often successful in poorer rural areas, with the initial capital coming from corporate CSR funds.

RISKS

“Panaji 24/7”, is a project outlining the steps to achieve a 24-hour water supply system (Royal Haskoning DHV, 2019), and there is a risk this scheme could make a header tank unnecessary. Whilst the more optimistic of our stakeholders evision the works will be completed within two years, we feel it will be unlikely to meet the water supply needs of Camrabhat in the medium term and that the community has a right to reliable and safe water in a short time frame.

Our participatory feldwork has raised the risk of any landscaped area becoming re-polluted with solid waste and open defecation. There is a serious chance of this, based on the low levels of pride observed and the past experience of a local activist who created a vegetable garden. Implementation of the landscaped features should take place in a phased approach and be driven, designed, owned and maintained by members of the community.

Figure 12.09 - Example of a decorated water tower in Sweden.

NATURE BASED SOLUTIONS FOR FLOODING AND POLLUTION

MITIGATING FLOODING AND WATER QUALITY DEGRADATION THROUGH BOLD NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS IN CAMRABHAT

WHAT?

Bold solutions that work with the natural environment and provide year-round value for surrounding communities could mitigate the tragedy of annual fooding which afects the community at Camrabhat. It is proposed that large attenuation ponds are built on Communidade land upstream of the community, managed by the Welfare Association for the beneft of people living on the Creek. Flood attenuation ponds can support “aquatic vegetation along their shoreline, which helps enhance treatment processes and has amenity and biodiversity benefts” (CIRIA, 2015). The proposal also has the potential to bring signifcant economic benefts to both the Communidade and community, as well as social and heritage value to the wider Panaji area.

Figure 12.10 - Native birdlife in Goa which thrives in wetlands.

WHY?

The community at Camrabhat have consistently ranked fooding as the most serious issue afecting their livelihoods. By ‘digging deep’ into the issue, our participatory feldwork revealed that their fnancial, physical, social and health assets are vulnerable to foods that occur near-annually. Severance from their place of employment, destruction of electronic goods and dengue fever are just some of the implications. The issue has eroded trust in the wider governmental and political system. As described, the community sits close to the foot of the Nagali hills, and natural and artifcial changes over the past 10 years have created impermeable barriers which direct surface water fows directly into the community. Downstream

fows are severely restricted, and this leads to water pooling. The issue is likely to get worse, as monsoon rainfall becomes more intense and concentrated due to climatic changes It was clear to the team that the issue required rapid, but sustainable solutions. It would feel unfair to expect the community to wait for Creek-wide solutions such as replacing bridges and culverts, creating green bufer zones and installing green roofs along the length of the Creek, as proposed as part of Panaji 24/7 (Royal Haskoning DHV, 2019). Whilst these may be sustainable, nature-based and provide wider community value, the timescale for benefts to be realised is unlikely to be acceptable. It was clear to the team that the issue required urgent resolution to retain any semblance of trust with the community.

Through informal interviews, residents from all parts of the community place the blame on upstream and downstream colonies for diverting foodwater and restricting downstream fows. However, a formal interview with a local engineer with an understanding of the local context revealed how impermeability of the upstream catchment leads to a loss of water storage. Attenuating and containing the foodwater shortly upstream from the community would be a big part of the solution for fooding, and would not be dependent on far more complex and costly proposals. Moreover, the land upstream of the community is abandoned for much of the year, and appears to bring little economic beneft for the vast range of cultivators. Options for attenuating foodwater were explored in a prototyping workshop with local activists, and it was agreed that whilst mitigating fooding was a given, any solution would also have to provide social and economic benefts for both the landowner (Communidade) and the community itself.

Figure 12.11 - Native wetland habitat. Figure 12.12 - Stakeholder overview.

HOW?

Simple rainfall run-of calculations and an assessment of the upstream catchment area (in the absence of detailed hydraulic data) have demonstrated that around 80,000 cumecs (m3) of storage could be sufcient for mitigating fooding in Camrabhat during a typical 3-inch storm in the monsoon season.

It is proposed that two attenuation ponds of around 40,000 cumecs each are constructed in the semi-abandoned agricultural land upstream of Camrabhat. These would be around 400 metres across, with a varying depth of around 0.75 metres. Automated sluice gates of Goan design (which have been in use in Goa for thousands of years, well before the colonial period) would allow water in and out of the attenuation ponds. Local activists have advised us that planting of native Colocasia (elephant ear), Canna Indica and Vetiver grass in and around the attenuation ponds would maximise aeration and the growth of bacteria that break down organic matter. Canna Indica, in particular, is highly resilient to untreated sewage and can absorb excess nutrients which would otherwise lead to eutrophication (Karelia, 2018). The scheme could have signifcant economic value for the local rural community. Many residents of Camrabhat used to fsh as a source of sustenance, and with careful management of water levels the attenuation ponds could become a valuable source of freshwater fsh, if the community were empowered in techniques on how to manage and cultivate them. The scheme could also have enormous heritage value. With 98% of the population of Panaji working in the tertiary section, knowledge of the bunds (dykes), sluice gates and nalas (irrigation channels) that formed the landscape of Goa for thousands of years is at risk of being lost (India Water Portal, 2019). These features would all form part of the attenuation ponds, and by partnering with organisations such as the Goa Science Centre, knowledge on the construction and management of such features could be passed on to the next generation. Very early-stage co-design should be undertaken with the community of Camrabhat and the Communidade, with sub-groups such as women and those of religious minorities consulted separately. This would help to ensure the traditional knowledge of the community is pooled to maximise the co-benefts of the scheme. Due to the scale of the scheme, overall construction should be the responsibility of the Public Works Department (PWD). Given that the PWD appears to have little experience of managing larger social schemes, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) should be signed with the St Inez Creek Welfare Association to hand over key decision making power to them, along with other key social institutions in the city. The Communidade would continue to be the owner of the land, and would retain the right to most of the economic benefts of the scheme.

PROTOTYPING AND REVISING

Feedback from civil activists demonstrated the critical importance of the ponds providing an economic beneft for the Communidade and the community, and therefore we revised our plan to build-in freshwater rice paddies, fshing and educational opportunities. Feedback from a local engineer highlighted the challenges of the cost of the land and the very fat topography. Depending on negotiations with the Communidade, he explained that if there was a need to purchase land it would likely be more cost-efcient to install deeper attenuation tanks with pumps, and therefore we identifed this as a risk. The community were highly supportive of the proposal - including the opportunities for fshing and leisure. However, they did say that it should not take precedence over improvements within Camrabhat itself, such as construction of a water tank.

Figure 12.13 Timeline of short-, mid- and long-term interventions 0 - 0.5 yrs

0.5 - 2 yrs

2 yrs +

Form sub-group within the St Ine Creek elfare ssociation ork with Imagine Panaji to build on previous work to rigorously identify root causes of flooding Raise finance from C I CCP Taleigao Panchayat and elfare ssociation ost e tensive co-design work shops with community hosted by local activists Install aeration units in upper St Ine Creek on trial basis

Construction of attenuation ponds by ater Resources epartment Upskill community members for monitoring ost workshops with young people for planting in and around the attenuation pond Review performance of aerator units and if necessary re-negotiate funding for maintenance

Continue to monitor and report on flooding and water uality with upskilled community members evelop economic infrastructure around ponds consider additional investments in a visitor centre