ABSTRACT
Meeting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 requires countries to ensure that their citizens have access to sources of drinking water that are free from both fecal and priority chemical pollutants. This presents a major policy challenge for many developing countries, including Bangladesh. Using a randomized experiment, this study evaluates the impact of a program to provide deep tubewells on access to safe drinking water in rural Bangladesh. The program reduces exposure to arsenic, a major natural pollutant, but not fecal contamination. Improvements in source water quality with respect to fecal contamination are unexpectedly modest. These source water quality improvements are further offset by these source water quality improvements are further offset by increases in travel time and possibly by changes in storage behavior, which increase recontamination. Our results suggest that while deep tubewell construction programs may be effective in reducing exposure to arsenic contamination in Bangladesh, they may have a limited effect on exposure to fecal contamination. Meeting SDG 6 in Bangladesh may necessitate complementary or alternative approaches.
