Loughborough University
Browse
Harvey04.pdf (1.17 MB)

Borehole sustainability in rural Africa: an analysis of routine field data

Download (1.17 MB)
conference contribution
posted on 2006-06-02, 10:27 authored by Peter Harvey
Handpump-equipped boreholes are one of the most common water supply technologies adopted in rural Africa, but often demonstrate low levels of sustainability. In addition to operational problems with the pump, the borehole itself may cease to provide adequate quantities of safe drinking water only a short time after construction. This can have a significant negative impact on poor rural communities, particularly in the dry season when alternative water sources are scarce. A study of 302 boreholes in Ghana aimed to investigate rapid-onset borehole failure in relation to field data typically available following drilling and development. The study showed that the likelihood of borehole failure increased by a factor of six when drilling occurred during the wet season, and discovered a strong correlation between monthly precipitation and respective failure rates for boreholes drilled in each month. The potential for borehole failure also increased significantly when the initial yield was below the guideline value of 10 l/min. There was no indication, however, that a higher guideline value would be a cost-effective measure to reduce failure rates.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Research Unit

  • Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)

Pages

1222774 bytes

Citation

HARVEY, P., 2004. Borehole sustainability in rural Africa: an analysis of routine field data. IN: Godfrey, S. (ed). People-centred approaches to water and environmental sanitation: Proceedings of the 30th WEDC International Conference, Vientiane, Laos, 25-29 October 2004, pp. 339-346.

Publisher

© WEDC, Loughborough University

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2004

Notes

This is a conference paper.

Other identifier

WEDC_ID:9989

Language

  • en

Usage metrics

    WEDC 30th International Conference

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Keywords

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC