Ulaanbaatar Basics
Ulaanbaatar, or UB, is the capital of Mongolia, an Asian country landlocked between China and Russia. The city originated as a monastic center for Buddhist monks in the 17th century. Currently, the city has a population of ~1.4 million people, representing approximately half of the country’s total population. Ulaanbaatar and Mongolia as a whole have a young population. The median age is 29 years and ~40% of the population is younger than 25 years. The city is the industrial, educational, and cultural center of the country. The young population has been a force to bring both political change and create an entrepreneurial culture within the city.
The city is an interesting case study to investigate water issues present in developing areas with population growth and industrialization. Specifically, UB suffers from quantity, quality, and access issues. UB’s current water infrastructure is inadequate to provide the required amount of water needed to supply the residents and industry. Additionally, contamination due to mining and improper waste disposals are degrading the city’s water quality. More importantly, UB faces severe water access issues, with residents in the Ger District, the city’s outer areas, having minimal access to water.
Ulaanbaatar has the title of the coldest capital in the world, with an arid, cold climate and blistering temperatures in the winter. Winter lasts for seven months, with average temperatures dropping below zero degrees Fahrenheit in Dec through Feb and can reach as cold as negative 40 degrees F. During the winter months, UB gets minimal precipitation and only in the summer months does UB receive rain. On average it receives 11.1 inches a year, roughly a fourth of what New York City receives.
Many of UB’s water issues stem from structural forces at play in Mongolia that permeate throughout its political, economic, and cultural ecosystems. Mongolia was a communist country from the early 1920s until 1992. During this time, urban planning and public works were centrally planned, with heavy support and know-how from the Soviet Union. However, since the transition governments to democracy, there has not been as extensive long-term planning plants and minimal accountability. UB represents two-thirds of Mongolia’s GDP and is the center for industry. For example, the next largest city after UB has only 90 thousand residents. As such, many Mongolians, especially young people, have migrated from the countryside to find job opportunities in the city. Additionally, Mongolia is one of the countries most affected by climate change. Mongolia used to be a nomad society herding sheep and livestock. Nomads were forced during communist times to live in assigned regions in the country. Over the past several years longer winters and hotter summers have caused significant strains on pastures, prompting many people to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and relocate to the city. As such, UB can be summarized as a city with a deficient urban planning and development strategy coupled with large amounts of population influx during this time.
The Ger districts are informal settlements inhabited by migrants that move from the countryside and the city’s lower classes. Mongolia enacted a law after the fall of Communism that any citizen could claim 0.07 hectares of land in the cities, 0.35 hectares in the provinces, and 0.5 hectares in the soums. This prompted many people moving to UB to claim their land on the outskirts of the city and set up their Gers. As a result, over 60% of the city’s residents live in the ger district.
Ger
Ulaanbaatar’s Water Issues
Water Quantity. The city relies primarily on groundwater drawn from the alluvial aquifer along the Tuul river. The city operates a bank filtration system, pumping water at a rate of 150,000 m3 to supply the city residents and industries. Residents in the Ger districts use hand dug wells as independent sources of water or purchase water from water kiosks that function as local distribution centers. The alluvial aquifer is composed of sediments forming two unconfined layers, the upper consisting of unconsolidated gravel and boulders and the lower with occasional clay dominant lenses. The city’s main water treatment plant is located to the east of the city and is responsible for treating 98% of the city’s water. To the west of the city there is one waste treatment plant. The city’s water delivery system relies on piped water (40% of supply), pipeline-connected kiosks (20%), truck-supported kiosks (30%), and private delivery (10%.) Water demand is expected to increase significantly over the next few years, both from the significant population increase as well as from industry growth. The current water system is a legacy from the communist era and is expected to max out by 2024.
Water quality. Not only is UB running out of water, the but the aquifer is getting polluted and is not being replenished as quickly. One of the main issues is pollution. Mongolia is a mining country, so there are heavy metal deposits resulting from the mining operations. Additionally, industrial waste from the factories around UB and the powerplant contribute to water pollution. The other main contaminant is water over-usage. The wastewater treatment plant was designed during the Soviet times for a population of 600 thousand, not 1.3 million, and so it is not capable of purifying the amount of water the city consumes. Furthermore, the use of wells as wastewater deposits that are not properly built are contaminating the aquifer.
Water access. The main problem that UB is the extremely unequal distribution and access to water. Out of UB’s water supply, 55% is used by residential users, 24% by the power plant, 17% business, and the remaining for agriculture. However, out of the residential users, 96% of the water is going to apartments and 4% to the ger districts. This means that 60% of the city’s population (~850 thousand people) uses only 2% of the city’s water. When comparing water consumption per person, apartment dwellers user 150 liter, while residents in the Ger districts use 7 liters. For comparison, people in New York City consume ~450 liters per day.
The amount of water that ger residents use is minimal. To put in into context, a standard flush toilet uses ~6 liters, so if anyone flushing a toilet more than once a day is using more water than people in the ger district. The WHO estimates that between 50-100 liters of water per person per day is the minimum required to meet the most basic needs. The residents in the Ger district is significantly below this.
Ger residents have three sources of water: hand-dug wells near their Gers, water from kiosks, and gathering from streams. Local NGOs estimate that ~70% of water comes from kiosks and 30% from streams. Kiosks have been spread throughout the area in order to provide water. Kiosks outside the reach of the aqueduct are filled and serviced by water trucks. While water is relatively cheap for residents, costing ~1 Turing per liter, they are very expensive to operate. It is estimated that the full unit cost of central water is 10x cheaper than water from kiosks. There are several implications to the quality of life and health of ger residents due to their limited capability to access water. Transport costs are very high. The water must be carried from the kiosks or springs to the Gers, which typically is an uphill trajectory through unpaved roads. This process makes it hard for residents to access water, particularly during the winter when temperatures plummet. Additionally, the ger district has serious sanitation issues. There is no wastewater disposal service in the districts, meaning that most residents dump the water in holes in the ground and use pit latrines as restrooms. Furthermore, gender issues and development are impacted by water, as women and children are responsible for getting the water. Water access in the ger districts is a crucial issue for UB, as residents are not getting enough water per the WHO standards as well as face multiple issues.
What Will Not Work
Residents in the Ger districts face severe difficulty in accessing water and only consume a fraction of what is deemed appropriate by international standards. Nonetheless, extending UB’s aqueduct to residents living in the Ger districts is not a viable option for three main reasons: the city is too large, the tasks would be too expensive, and the city’s cold temperatures greatly hamper the feasibility of the project. The ger district extends throughout the city and is fairly spread out in all directions from the downtown area. The ger districts extend up into the hills that surround UB, so in order to extend the aqueduct, pipes would have to go uphill, requiring extra pumps and electricity, to push the water up into the mountains, This would realistically be very expensive to do as the area that would need to be covered is vast and there is no existing infrastructure. Additionally, the frigid temperature in the winter complicate water delivery over long distances. Very thick insulation is required for water to not freeze during the winter, which would further increase the costs.
Proposed Solutions
When thinking about what type of solutions would work to increase water access to the Ger districts, the key is to approach the problem on a small scale. The ger districts are typically categorized depending on their location to the city center. There are three broadly used classifications: center city, mid-ger, and fringe. The center city and mid-Gers are typically older permanent settlements, while fringe areas are newer settlements typically occupied by the latest wave of migrants. For the center and mid-Gers, there is a possibility to enact small-scale communal wells and micro wastewater collection centers, while for the fringe areas relocation remains the best option.
For the center and mid ger areas, infrastructure can be built on a small-scale that supplies several Gers within a specified geographic area. Wells or storage units can be placed in higher parts of the hill and use gravity to distribute water to the nearby Gers. The storage areas can be filled via trucks. This provides several advantages: no need for connectivity to the main system, eliminating transport costs and additional infrastructure required; water trucks for water delivery are widely used in the city and so there is innate knowledge on how to use them; deep wells avoid the risk of freezing; small-scale scope eliminates the need for costly insulated pipes. Nonetheless, where are some difficulties in performing this project. There needs to be physical construction of the storage wells as well as the pipes connecting the units to the houses. However, given the significant percentage of unpaved roads, this could be used as an opportunity to combine water infrastructure with transportation infrastructure and pave the roads after the pipes have been dug. The pipes need to be deep in order to avoid freezing. Finally, there need to be investments in the Gers themselves to access the water (e.g. latrines, wash basins, etc.)
Wastewater management can also be incorporated on a small scale by leveraging communal septic tanks or wastewater storage units. This eliminates the main problem of having individuals depositing their wastewaters in holes in the ground. Currently, there are no wastewater management infrastructures in the ger district because the volume of water used is too low to justify the investment. However, with the volume of water increasing if the tanks are installed, a more robust wastewater system is going to be needed. Communal septic tanks facilitate safe processing of waste as well as streamlines pick up. Similar to septic tanks in other areas, trucks can be used in order to empty the tanks and bring the wastes to a processing facility or to another place for safe disposal. If built correctly, this method eliminates current aquifer contamination issues. However, there are some difficulties that need to be considered. Pipes are needed to be installed to transport the wastewater from the Gers into the communal septic tank. Similar to clean water, these pipes need to be buried deep in order to minimize the risk of freezing. Additionally, there is a need for coordinating the removal of the wastewater, considering that it is most difficult in the winter months from the companies.
While these small-scale water infrastructure projects are expensive and require investment in infrastructure, they could provide water to many parts of the ger district without having to invest in large-scale infrastructure projects. This method leverages existing technology – truck to transport water as well as deep well storage that are needed in UB’s frigid winter climate. Additionally, providing wastewater infrastructure shelters the aquifer from being polluted and provides a cleaner environment in the summer months.
For the fringe districts, the best strategy is to attempt to relocate residents closer to the city center. Relocation proposals are always controversial and not necessarily feasible; however, it remains the best option for residents seeking access to water. The fringe areas are typically newer settlements that could be temporary and so it is unclear whether the investment is justified in the long term. Fringe residents are most at need, but the provision of utilities and services is the most expensive because they are farthest away from the center. Thus, they are the beneficiaries that would benefit the most from the government’s resettling initiatives.
Educational programs are also important to provide critical information to best uses on water usage. In particular, in UB the use of streams as water sources, as many ger residents to, is dangerous. The streams are typically contaminated by chemicals and runoff as well as harbor bacteria during the summer months. NGO workers focusing on the Ger districts explained how some of these streams are believed to have healing powers and residents throw in rice and other grains, which pollute the stream and enable bacteria growth. Several strains of harmful bacteria are routinely found in the city’s streams.
Conclusion
UB has experienced substantial growth over the past decades as the country’s population has migrated to live there seeking jobs and a better life. The city grew without planning, resulting in over 60% of the residents living in the ger districts, outer areas that lack basic infrastructure including water. This 60 % of residents (more than 800 thousand) only consume 2% of the city’s water. The lack of access to water creates significant transport costs, sanitation issues, as well as gender disparities to ger residents. However, connecting the Ger districts to the main aqueduct is not a viable option as the district is too big and it would be too costly given the insulation requirements to withstand the blistering winter cold. As such, solutions to provide water need to be on a small-scale basis. For Gers in the city-center and the mid-district, water delivery systems can be constructed that supply a certain number of Gers within small areas. This way, the amount and costs of providing water are optimized. Similarly, wastewater management systems can be installed on a small-scale using communal septic tanks. Overarching any strategy, education to all ger residents about best water use practices is key.
Works Cited
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