AIDS Orphan's Boarding School - Water Projects
There is currently no secure water supply in the Gotichaki area. The closest uninterrupted water supply, which is open river water, is 1.2 kilometers away down a steep ravine. There are an estimated 6,000 people in this area without any piped or clean water for domestic use.
The Okari AIDS orphans boarding school needs a more efficient and economical way of securing it's water. We currently rely on water catchment, the children carrying water from the river and hiring adults to carry water to the school. We are spending ~ $160 month to buy water. The steps below list the history of our water securement strategy and where we find our plans as of Dec 2009:
1) We obtained a hydro geological report for a deep borehole. The survey indicated that there was no water on the school site. The survey reported that the nearest water source was several hundred yards from the school. The report stated that the borehole would go through 5 different layers of rock and would need to go to a depth of ~ 480 feet.
2) On April 13th 2009 we obtained a second hydro geological report as a backup to the first report. The decision for a second survey was made after reviewing many different well drilling bids and our desire to have a well on our own property, not someone else's. The second hydro geological report came back with the same disappointing results; no water anywhere on the school grounds. These two reports have effectively stopped all of our efforts to plan for a deep borehole on our 5 acre campus.
The Foundation is now pursuing a two-fold water strategy. Below are the plans we are currently working on to secure water for the school:
1) Continue to add water storage capacity to our boarding school. All of the school's roofs are equipped for water catchment when it rains. The problem we face now is that when it rains it only takes a matter of a couple of hours for the tanks to completely fill. When this happens we loose the opportunity to store additional water as the tanks simply overflow onto the ground.
Our plan calls for adding an additional 140,000 liters in a new underground storage tank. This will take our total storage capacity to 165,000 liters. This should allow the school to store ~ 3 months of water at our current user capacity (100 users). The estimated cost to add this extra water storage capacity is approximately $11,300.
2) Because rains can be unpredictable, we are also working on a plan to run a 2" water line down to the river. This plan has already secured the permissions from all the land owners (6 total) whose land we would need to cross with our pipeline. In exchange for crossing their land we will install one standpipe on each parcel of land we cross. We will work with the Kenyan Power Company's Rural Electrification group to run an electric line down to the river as well. This will also allow local families along the way, who could never have afforded to have an electric transformer near their home, to buy electricity from Kenyan Power. We will also work with local government agencies to allow us permission to pump the river's water in this manner. As of now, all lights are green on this plan with the local authorities. The total bid costs for this project are approximately $12,000.
|
