Upgrading Indigenous Water Sources

Upgrading Indigenous Water Sources

20. To improve water quality of indigenous and traditional water sources it will be necessary to adopt some corrective technical measures and to introduce, whenever possible, simple, low cost technologies accepted by people. In general, the most economical solution is to upgrade the available water sources. Existing hand dug wells are often far too large for small padas. In fact, the minor amount of water removed daily from these large size wells does not favour a fast renewal of water, with consequent heavy pollution and fast growth of green algaes.

21. The contamination problem can be controlled by:

Decreasing the size of the wells, if necessary;
covering, or reducing the size of the well top to limit the penetration of pollutants;
installing hand-pumps, whenever this is justified.

The reduced volume of water for individual wells should not have negative effects on the water availability per person.

22. Wells to be selected for upgrading should have sufficient, water to meet the people's needs; to ascertain this, it will be necessary to carry out pump tests during the dry months.The selected wells should be upgraded with the users participation and contribution as specified earlier.