Department Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development

Water-Energy-Environment (3E) Programme

The Water-Energy-Environment (3E) programme was launched in 2012 with funding support from the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), with the aim to support scientific partnerships between the International Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering (2iE) of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and Swiss universities and institutes (EPFL, HEIG VD and EAWAG).

Eawag and 2iE are particularly focusing on the fate and transport of arsenic on the environment. The project's first phase (2012-2016) focused on the development of risk maps and mitigation technologies for the removal of arsenic from drinking water. The technologies studied were:

  • Reverse osmosis and nanofiltration.
  • Community-scale treatment filters based on commercially available iron-hydroxide filter materials (for rural areas with boreholes).
  • Filters containing locally available materials (suitable to the household level).

The project received a one-year extension (2017) to assess the uptake of arsenic in food products (i.e. the impact of irrigating and cooking with arsenic contaminated water), as well as current practices in term of drinking water quality monitoring (chemical and microbial water quality).

Publications

Clair-Caliot, G.; Marks, S. J.; Hug, S. J.; Bretzler, A.; N'guessan, N.'goran D.; Tihe, S. F. K.; Lalanne, F. (2021) Uptake of arsenic by irrigated vegetables and cooked food products in Burkina Faso, Frontiers in Water, 3, 667308 (17 pp.), doi:10.3389/frwa.2021.667308, Institutional Repository

Arsenic au Burkina Faso Videos