Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Water Source


And another blog post for good measure...

We had a bit of trouble locating many water sources, particularly broken down handpumps. Though we thought there would be many, we only located two nearby the school. Based on conversations, we think there may be more.

The problems with the handpumps do appear to be simple, and probably a relatively fix... in both of the pumps it appears a faulty check valve is the problem. However, the sustainability of the pumps are a bigger issue. All handpumps in the area have little or no management, so from conversations with URF staff, they will inevitably fall into disrepair without an imposed management plan, which may be part of our implementation.

As for source enhancement... it was less promising. We saw an example of this with a shallow borehole placed next to a surface water pond/swamp. It unfortunately produced the same water as the surface water and the local village didn't even bother collecting from it. If a handpump isn't aesthetically pleasing, it is viewed as dirty and preference is given to surface water. Something to think about...

1 comment:

  1. This suggests that our ideas for "bank filtration" are not feasible. Do you have any idea of the depth of the well? Would it be possible to install deeper wells that would draw from cleaner water?

    -Tim

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