Read the passage below carefully:
Across urban centers in West Africa, municipal authorities are turning to decentralized fecal sludge treatment plants to address severe sanitation deficits in low-income settlements. Unlike massive, centralized sewer systems that require billions of dollars in infrastructure and vast quantities of water, these compact modular facilities process human waste locally into valuable resources such as bio-char fuel briquettes and organic fertilizers. In Accra, a recently commissioned plant handles forty metric tonnes of sludge daily using solar drying beds and thermal hydrolysis, drastically reducing waterborne pathogens in nearby lagoons. Environmental health experts emphasize that while community-level waste treatment plants cannot completely replace urban infrastructure grids, their rapid deployment capability and revenue-generating by-products offer an immediate, ecologically viable solution for rapidly expanding cities facing severe fiscal constraints.
Which of the following statements best synthesizes the essential argument of the passage while excluding non-essential illustrative details?
- Decentralized waste treatment plants provide a rapid, cost-effective sanitation solution for growing West African cities by turning waste into usable energy and fertilizer.Answer
- BA recently commissioned waste facility in Accra utilizes solar drying beds to process forty metric tonnes of sludge daily and sanitize nearby lagoons.
- CDecentralized sludge treatment systems will permanently replace centralized municipal sewerage infrastructure across all major African metropolises within the next decade.
- DLarge-scale centralized sewer networks are inefficient because they consume excessive amounts of water and rely heavily on thermal hydrolysis technology.