Spatio - Temporal Variation of Septage Characteristics of a Semi-arid Metropolitan City in a Developing Country

Krithika, D1, Anu Rachel Thomas1, Gomathy R Iyer1, Martin Kranert2 and Ligy Philip1*

1Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Division

Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras, Chennai-600 036, India

2 Institute for Sanitary Engineering, Water Quality and Solid Waste Management

University of Stuttgart, Germany

* Corresponding author

E-mail:

Supplementary material

List of Tables

Table S1 Questionnaire for Truck Driver

1)  What is the total Capacity of Truck (in L)?
2)  Whether the truck belongs to private agency or government?
3)  What is the Quantity of Septage inside the Truck (in L)?
4)  What is the maximum number of trips by trucks per day?
5)  What is type of source the sample was taken? A). Hotels B).House C).Apartments D).Health centers E). Hospitals F). Institutes G). Slums
6)  What is the sample area/location belongs to?
7)  What is economic condition of that area?
8)  How many inhabitants are using septic tank in place where the Septage is taken?
9)  How many households are there in particular locations?
10)  How many septic tanks are there in particular locations?
11)  Whether that the tank is connected only to that particular house or surroundings?
12)  What is the source of water supply to that particular area? Whether it is metro water /groundwater/others. If others what is source of supply?
13)  Whether the area is having underground drainage system?
14)  What is frequency of Septage collection in that area?
15)  How frequency the tank was cleaned? When was the last cleaning done?
16)  Whether any leakage/overflow was reported earlier?
17)  In case that particular area is not accessible to reach the truck, what is the alternative way they followed for septage disposal?

List of Figures

Fig.S1 Map showing Septage sampling locations from metropolitan Chennai city

Fig.S2 Variation of ratio of VSS/FSS with cleaning frequency for two different seasons