AguaClara goes to India
I’m on my way home after an amazing week in India. My goal
for the trip was to find the overlap between what AguaClara can provide and
what could be taken to scale in India. The Cornell network had created
connections before the trip that include PRADAN, an Indian NGO, the Tata Trust,
a funding source for development work in India, and TACO-AN, the Tata-Cornell
program for Agriculture and Nutrition.
Finding the overlap required some creative exploration.
PRADAN works with Indian villages that have fewer than 1000 people. AguaClara
has experience with towns with populations between 1500 and 15,000. The Indian
villages in Jharkhand use hand pumps. The terrain is gently rolling with few perennial
surface water sources available and topography that makes gravity powered water
supply systems almost impossible.
There is strong interest in switching from hand pumps to
distribution systems with water on tap at each household. The Indian government
is installing deep borehole wells with an electric submersible pump, elevated
storage tank, solar panel on top of the tank, and distribution systems. The
deep borehole wells have a significant risk of not having sufficient water and
failure of the pumping system leaves the village without any way to get water
from the well.
PRADAN has piloted a very different approach. They identify
a lowland location with a large contributing watershed that the villagers can
modify to improve water infiltration and raise the water table during the monsoon.
They dig a well that is more than 7 m in diameter and about 10 m deep. The well
is lined with cut stones that are laid like bricks without mortar. Gravel is
placed on the outside of the stone lining to reduce soil infiltration. PRADAN
uses a diesel powered pump to lift water from a covered lowland well to an
elevated storage tank. These wells are similar to traditional wells and they
can be used for irrigation, watering livestock, as well as for domestic water
supply.
The lowland wells are effectively a high quality surface
water source. Some of the water entering the wells takes a short path from the
ground near the well. That short path means that soil particles don’t have
adequate opportunity to be filtered from the water. The US EPA would classify
these wells as ground water under the influence of surface water and they would
require filtration for use as a drinking water source. We measured the
turbidity of one of the lowland wells and found 4 NTU. That would meet the
Indian standard of 5 NTU. The turbidity must increase somewhat during the rainy
season, but the reports are that the water is clear except perhaps for some brief
periods after heavy rains.
We traveled to a number of sites near Ranchi, Jharkhand in
northeast India. It quickly became clear that finding the connection between
AguaClara and Jharkhand villages was going to require some creative thinking.
The lowland wells offered cleaner water that could be much closer to the
villages than surface water sources. The lowland wells would require filtration
and disinfection to provide safe drinking water. The relatively high quality
water suggested that flocculation and sedimentation wouldn’t be needed. We had
a number of long discussions at the PRADAN offices in Ranchi and together we
came up with a new strategy for village water supply systems that couples the
PRADAN approach of using the lowland wells with AguaClara’s low flow stacked
rapid sand filter and chemical dose controller for a coagulant and chlorine.
The proposed system will use a low head pump to lift water from the well to a
small building that will house two pumps, doser, filter, and a small filtered
water storage tank. The second pump will be used to lift water from the
filtered water storage tank to an overhead storage tank and then to the
distribution system.
Everyone was enthusiastic about this new model for providing
safe drinking water. It could be widely replicated, is economical, and would
give villagers access to high quality water for all of their household needs.
The well could also be used for small scale irrigation to grow vegetables as is
already being done in several of the villages where PRADAN has been working.
And if any component of the system fails, unlike deep boreholes, the villagers
can still access water in the well using a bucket on a rope.
PRADAN has a strong network of villages with self-help
groups and thus it was easy to identify several good candidates for pilot
projects including one that already has a lowland well. With PRADAN and
AguaClara finding plenty of common ground including a shared philosophy, the
next step was to begin writing a proposal to Tata Trust and then meet with
representatives of the Tata Trust in Mumbai. The meeting in Mumbai went very
well with excellent questions and quick connections to the many opportunities
for AguaClara in India.
The India team of TACO-AN, Tata Trust, PRADAN, AguaClara
LLC, and AguaClara@Cornell share a goal of having the first system fully
operational by the time the rains begin around June 15 of 2013. That means we
need to swing into action immediately and get a team on the ground in Jharkhand
by the end of March. And as we take these next steps, may we remember that
there are 600,000 villages in India and most of them don’t have safe drinking
water on tap. The government of India is investing heavily in improving
infrastructure at the village level and thus scaling up will go rapidly if we
can demonstrate a viable model. It is time to begin a new RIDE
(Research/Invent/Design/Empower).