I was getting very ready to slam on this idea. Some of my work touches on water and sanitation in the developing world and (as I now can guess you are very aware), that world is filled with innovative, well-intenioned ideas that fail terribly due to lack of thinking through, especially engineering analysis.

Thanks for writing up this example in a way that's easy for others to follow and in way which is neither pessimistic nor negative, just honest. I'm strongly going to suggest it as a reading component to the faculty members I work with who give lectures on the topics.