Benchmarking sustainability of small towns piped drinking water services

Benchmarking sustainability for small towns piped water services is needed due to the persistent and worsening challenges affecting the quality, level and reliability of small-towns piped water services in spite of the implementation of numerous policies, plans, and initiatives for sustainability. The growing demand from rapidly increasing populations for reliable services provides further justification. Strict sustainability benchmarks will help operators of small towns piped water services to consistently evaluate their performance against these benchmarks and take pragmatic actions for improvement. It will also help national governments and agencies responsible for small towns in their monitoring, evaluation, harmonisation and coordination activities and provide objective basis for comparability and documentation of best practices. An important benchmark like the operating cost coverage ratio of piped water services will provide strong indication of sustainability as it demonstrates the capacity of the services to replace themselves and even invest in new infrastructure for expanding populations.