OR/15/019 Background and rationale: Difference between revisions

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| 31–40%, with additional 17% abandoned<br>(''main issues identified to failure'': seasonal yield,<br>mechanical breakdown of handpump)
| 31–40%, with additional 17% abandoned<br>(''main issues identified to failure'': seasonal yield,<br>mechanical breakdown of handpump)
| MoWR 2012<ref name="MoWR">MoWR 2012. Sierra Leone Waterpoint report. Ministry of Energy and Water Resources, Sierra Leone.</ref>
| MoWR 2012<ref name="MoWR"></ref>
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| ''Tanzania''
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Revision as of 10:20, 3 December 2019

Bonsor H C1, Oates N2, Chilton P J1, Carter R C3, Casey V3, MacDonald A M1, Calow R2, Alowo R4, Wilson P1, Tumutungire M5, Bennie M5. 2015. A Hidden Crisis: strengthening the evidence base on the sustainability of rural groundwater supplies – results from a pilot study in Uganda. British Geological Survey Internal Report, OR/15/019.

1BGS Edinburgh, 2ODI London, 3Wateraid UK, 4Wateraid Uganda, 5Makerere University

A hidden crisis

Extending access to improved services for the estimated 300 million inhabitants of SSA currently without access to safe water is fundamental to many development efforts to improve health, reduce poverty and increase the resilience of households to climate change (Hunter et al. 2009[1]; UNICEF 2012[2]). Estimates suggest 340 million people have gained access to safe water over the period 1990 to 2010 under the umbrella of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs; UNICEF 2012[2]). However, the focus on increased coverage and building new infrastructure under the MDGs has meant there has been little assessment of the sustainability of new water points, and this is increasingly recognised as having obscured a hidden crisis of supply failure (DFID, 2012[3]; Calow et al. 2013[4]). Furthermore, there were 64 million more people unserved in the region in 2012 compared to 1990.

Available evidence for SSA, albeit fragmented and methodologically unclear, suggests that 30% or more of groundwater‐based water supplies are non‐functional at the time of monitoring and a greater number can experience seasonal problems (for example 50% in Sierra Leone) (e.g. Haysom 2006[5]; Rietveld et al. 2009[6]; RWSN 2009[7]; MoEWR 2012[8]). This failure of supplies is not a new problem. In fact the limited evidence available suggests that rates of failure have remained stubbornly high at around 30% over the past 40 years, despite a major shift towards increasing community management and demand responsive approaches in the 1980s by NGOs, governments and donors to try to improve supply sustainability (McPherson and McGarry 1992[9]; Lockwood and Smits 2011[10]; Foster 2014[11]). There is now growing recognition that long‐term functionality of supplies is dependent on a wide range of factors, but in the absence of an agreed diagnostic or evidence base on the extent and causes of failure, donors and national governments risk repeating mistakes and achieving poor value for money (de la Harpe 2012[12]; Foster 2014[11]).

Improving the sustainability of supplies is vital if the benefits — improved health, nutrition, time savings, education, particularly for the poorest — of original investments in WASH are not to be lost. DFID has earmarked over US$100 million for Ethiopia, with a similar sum set aside for Uganda, Sierra Leone and Malawi combined (Rietveld et al. 2009[6]). However the benefits of these future investments will be lost if improved supplies cannot be sustained (Adow et al 2013[13]). In Malawi, Engineers without Borders estimated that $50 million injected into improving access to water by around 100 NGOs and 10 donors within the country in the last 10 years has had little impact on the sector’s overall ability to deliver sustainable supplies at scale (Triple‐S, 2013[14]).

New international goals for universal access to safe drinking water depend critically on the ability of development partners to accelerate and sustain access to groundwater (UN Water 2013). The characteristics of groundwater, and its relative ubiquity, favour its development for meeting dispersed rural demand at low cost and recent publication of maps of groundwater storage and expected borehole yields for Africa has intensified interest in its use to alleviate poverty and increase water security (World Bank 2009[15]; MacDonald et al. 2012[16]). These new international goals, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are also likely to call for higher and more sustainable standards of service than those used for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (Onda et al. 2012[17]; Bain 2012[18]; UN Water 2013[19]).

Achieving improved sustainability of supplies under the SDGs will require a step‐change in understanding of the inter‐related causes of water point failure and unreliability, and actions that can be taken to mitigate risks. In the absence of systematic evidence base or agreed diagnostic analysis on why sources are non‐functional there is little opportunity to learn from past mistakes. Growing evidence indicates that this is not a simple problem solved by capacity building alone, additional finance, or a new design of pump. The roots of failure are likely to lie in a complex set of multifaceted issues in which there are immediate causes of failure (e.g. poor siting, lack of spare parts, basic maintenance) and more systemic, deep‐rooted underlying conditions that shape an environment in which failure is more or less likely — Figure 1.

This pilot study has begun to develop a robust methodology and approach to the systematic investigation of the causes of groundwater service failure in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). The methodology and techniques developed in the project form a springboard to underpin much more extensive research on the multi‐faceted reasons for water point failures in SSA.

Figure 1 Some of the causal factors and underlying conditions which lead to water failure.

The evidence challenge and key research issues

Despite the scale of the problem, there is little evidence on why groundwater‐based supplies continue to fail in SSA. There are many opinions amongst local practitioners, water users, hydrogeologists and government staff as to why supplies fail (Danert 2013[20]). One of the main reasons cited is poor construction quality of boreholes — the use of cheap materials and borehole construction methods, which leads to early failure or deterioration of the service. Poor siting of water points, which fails to take full account of local hydrogeological conditions and to optimally exploit groundwater potential is another key issue raised by practitioners (e.g. Harvey 2004[21]). The disconnection of siting, design and construction processes for new boreholes often leads to inappropriate siting and/or construction of water points (Danert 2013[20]). Lack of maintenance, for example due to the inability of communities to raise the necessary finance or difficulty in accessing spare parts is another contributor to failure in many cases (Skinner 2009[22]; Franceys and Pezon 2010[23]). More recently, it has become convenient to blame problems on climate change.

It is likely that there are many different inter‐related contributory causes, and that unravelling them requires an understanding of (1) groundwater resources, (2) water point siting, design and construction, (3) financing, management, external support and community arrangements, and (4) demand pressures. Each of these topics is discussed below, with some of the current uncertainties in how they contribute to supply failure highlighted.

Groundwater resources
Groundwater occurrence depends primarily on geology, geomorphology and weathering, soil, land use and climate (both current and historic). The interplay of these factors gives rise to complex hydrogeological environments with countless variations in the quantity, quality, ease of access, and renewability of groundwater resources (MacDonald et al. 2012[16]). The result is that groundwater conditions vary significantly, often over very short distances (within tens or hundreds metres in some aquifer types), and good hydrogeological expertise and techniques are required to site and develop a water source in the most productive part of an aquifer. It is as yet unclear how much of a role the variations in groundwater resource availability and aquifer parameters (e.g. local‐scale variations in permeability) play in supply failure in different hydrogeological settings.

Groundwater chemistry, in addition to being a significant health hazard in areas with elevated Arsenic or Fluoride, can also have a major influence on borehole and pump performance (Nash and McCall 1995[24]; Selinus et al. 2013[25]). This is particularly the case in areas with acidic, mineralised or reducing groundwaters, where metals can be mobilised including by the corrosion of pumps and borehole casings.

There remains considerable uncertainty about the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on groundwater resources (Taylor et al. 2013[26]) and supply failure. Despite concerns that rural water supplies may fail due to a lack of recharge and local over‐exploitation of groundwater resources (Robins and Fergusson 2014[27]) there has been no substantial study to gather evidence of the contribution of falling water‐tables, or sporadic and episodic recharge to rural water source failure.

Interaction between water availability and demand
Seasonal failure of shallow borehole supplies is often argued to reflect resource depletion, but in reality the failure may relate to a number of issues, for example: increased demand on water sources in periods of drought (Calow et al. 2009[28]); competing groundwater users in the dry season; or, strong vertical permeability gradients particularly in laterite soils (Bonsor et al. 2014[29]); and, inappropriate design of the water point for the aquifer conditions. As alternative sources fail significant pressure is put upon the remaining water supplies, often beyond the design use of the water points, which can lead to failure (Calow et al. 1997[30]).

Engineering considerations – water point siting, design and construction
The design and construction of the borehole itself impacts significantly on handpump performance and can determine the wear that a pump will receive. For example: borehole inefficiency due to poor design and construction can considerably increase pumping water depths; the ingress of fines can clog up boreholes and rapidly wear pump parts; removal rather than replacement of rising main sections in handpump maintenance; borehole deviation from the vertical can cause rising mains to split; and encrustation with iron or manganese can limit water flow into the borehole. If a water source suffers from these issues then repeated handpump failures will be much more common.

A key factor for the success of a borehole supply is whether the borehole siting and design are appropriate to the aquifer properties and groundwater resource available — critically: whether the borehole is sited within the most productive part of the aquifer; whether the screened interval of the borehole, and overall borehole depth, are targeted at the main aquifer horizon; and if the borehole materials are appropriate to the groundwater chemistry.

What is unknown is the relative significance of these engineering and hydrogeological considerations, compared to community management issues, governance and access to external support. This remains a key question for future research programmes if they are to point the way toward more sustainable supplies.

Procurement processes and supervision for drilling and installation
Other studies have highlighted the critical importance of the procurement process for high quality construction of water points and the long‐term functionality and sustainability of the points (RWSN 2010[31]). Myths of the rural Water Supply Sector, RWSN Executive Steering Committee: St Galllen, Switzerland.). Drillers can either be paid in a lump sum for the number of boreholes to be drilled, or according to a bill of quantities, wherein drillers are paid per metre drilled, and per hour for development (e.g. purging and test pumping) and completion (e.g. insertion of sanitary seal, cleaning of borehole) of a water point. Procurement by a bill of quantities has been found to be much more successful in creating the right environment and incentives for ensuring careful and higher quality construction of boreholes, as opposed to a one off payment, in which boreholes are often drilled too shallow, or completed unsatisfactorily (e.g. incorrect backfill, incomplete sanitary seals). In contrast, ‘no water‐no pay’ contracts, for example, may encourage drillers to pass as 'successful' boreholes which in fact have marginal yields at the time of construction and which may be even less satisfactory in drier times.

Effective and value‐for‐money contracting also requires adequate technical supervision of the key stages of the construction process, and the pricing of contracts is also important. If the ‘per metre’ drilling rate is very high compared to the ‘per hour’ or ‘lump sum’ rates, then in the absence of supervision there may be a temptation to drill deeper than strictly necessary and take short cuts on other parts of the construction process such as cleaning, developing and testing the borehole and completing backfill, sanitary seals and headworks.

Community financing and management of supplies
The need for community participation in the planning and implementation of rural water supply development projects became increasingly apparent in the 1980s when it was recognised that top‐ down centralised approaches were neither affordable nor effective (MacDonald et al. 2005[32]). The ability of a community to repair, finance and manage a supply was thus considered essential to the sustainability of the service. Considerable effort has since been devoted in development initiatives in SSA to ensuring the proper establishment and functioning of community management committees and to build the capacity of local people to maintain the handpumps. Yet whilst there has been much work by Governments, NGOs and donors to enhance community‐based management of handpump supplies, persistently high non‐functionality rates have led some to question whether the emphasis on certain forms of community‐based management is part of the problem (Sara and Katz 1998[33]; Schouten and Moriarty 2003[34]; Foster 2014[11]).

There is now a growing acceptance that rural communities are unable to manage their own water supplies without some degree of regular external support that encompasses monitoring, technical advice and assistance, and training (Harvey and Reed 2007[35]; RWSN 2010[31]; IRC 2012[36]; Foster 2014[11]) although gaps in this support remain. It is also questionable whether cost‐recovery is a feasible model for poor communities, many of whom struggle to finance minor repairs, and cannot afford initial capital costs, major repairs or rehabilitation. Finally, as with other causes of failure, there is very little knowledge or systematic evidence base to indicate when, or the extent to which, community finance and management of a supply can be considered a dominant factor of water point failure.

Wider institutional arrangements
With recent focus of WASH initiatives having been on strengthening the capacity of WUC and waterpoint committees at the community‐level, the linkages between higher level socio‐political water management arrangements and local level arrangement are less well explored and understood. Studies which have examined both local‐scale and wider external management structures have found external support and policy to be as significant as community‐management models to water supply failure rates (Jansz 2011[37]). This is in part due to the wider institutional arrangements determining lines of communication between communities, local NGOs, district water officers (DWOs), and therein the ability of communities to access external support or to manage a water point is poorly understood.

Review of previous work

There are few systematic studies addressing the causes of groundwater based supply failure in Africa. Those that have been done have often been very small‐scale. With increasing appreciation of how common failure is, DFID, WaterAid, and other NGOs such as UNICEF, have begun to monitor sustainability of new supplies, or implement sustainability surveys (e.g. RWSN 2010[31]; Leclert 2012[38]). These data are now providing useful insights on a broader‐scale. The studies, however, are disparate in both their focus and methodologies, and the results are not directly comparable. In the absence of a common diagnostic framework varying definitions of failure are used and few of the studies consider all facets of service failure (many focusing on management of supplies, whilst others are focused on the quality of borehole construction, or the availability of groundwater resources e.g. Owolabi et al. 1991[39]). Crucially, there is a lack of research on how the different facets of failure interact (e.g. technical and institutional factors) to cause failure of a water point. A few studies, such as those by Whittington et al. (2009)[40] in Ghana, and Harvey et al (2002)[41] in Zambia (part of the DFID‐funded research project ‘Guidelines for Sustainable Handpumps in Africa’), have evaluated the significance of different factors contributing to supply failure within an individual area, but in the absence of a common framework with which to compare these studies and extrapolate the results to similar hydrogeological or institutional settings. Many functionality surveys and data sets are collected during rapid assessments. It is rarely possible to discern the exact causes of failure with any great certainty from simply observing a water source and speaking to a limited number of users at a single point in time.

Despite these limitations, the available studies and post‐construction audits examining water point functionality in SSA do provide some insight into the scale of non‐functionality in handpump supplies, and also importantly, to the prevalent primary symptoms and causal factors of failure. The limited evidence suggests that rates of failure have remained stubbornly high at between 30 and 50% over the past 40 years (McPherson and McGarry 1992[42]; Lockwood and Smits 2011[43]). Non‐functionality figures in Africa are indicated to be approximately 30%, and there are shown to be similar symptoms of failure across a range of physical, social and governance settings and in different countries — namely, insufficient yield, poor water quality, or a range mechanical failures (e.g. from breakdown of head works, or corrosion) — Table 1.

A review of UNICEF drilling programmes in Malawi by Anscombe (1996)[44] found that 93% of the 100 supplies surveyed were functioning but a further 25% of these supplies had some problems with insufficient yield and inadequate quality. In up to 15% of supplies there was premature wear caused by high demands (>100 households using the supply), and in 10% poor maintenance due to unmotivated Water User Committees (WUCs) at the supplies. In Nigeria a post‐construction audit of borehole handpump supplies found success rates varied by up to 30% between different drillers (varying from 70–100%) (Owolabi et al. 1994[39]). There the primary symptom of failed supplies was seasonally low yield. The study focused heavily on the technical factors contributing to failures, but nevertheless provided useful insights into the most common causes of failure in the crystalline Basement Complex aquifers in southwest Nigeria: improper casing of the overburden and failure of the boreholes to penetrate the main water‐bearing horizons being the main factors (Owolabi et al. 1994)[39].

In contrast, an inventory of supplies in southeast Nigeria found supply failure to be on average much higher (typically 40%), and a further 40% had declining performance (Odoh et al. 2009[45]). The failures were reported to be due to excessive sand pumping, muddy water extraction and long‐term decline in the performance capability and increased drawdown in the borehole. The main contributory factors giving rise to these issues were identified to be: a lack of proper evaluation of the groundwater resources and poor siting of the boreholes in the sedimentary bedrock aquifer, poor planning, lack of appropriate expertise, inadequate financial resources, and inappropriate pumping rates for the groundwater resource available (Odoh et al. 2009[45]).

The need for better hydrogeological knowledge to inform planning and design of supplies was a key recommendation for improving water point functionality in this region of Nigeria, alongside developing an effective maintenance culture — something also found to be an underlying factor to studies of supply failure in Botswana (Riekel 2002[46]). These recommendations are also advocated by UNICEF post‐construction audits in country programmes, particularly that there is a need for systematic procedures, or arrangements, for suitability and quality of construction materials to be checked before installation, and for a formal hand‐over process to the community for management of the supply (UNICEF 2012[47]). Table 1 summarises some of the functionality data available for sub‐Saharan Africa from existing studies.

Table 1 A summary of some of the functionality data available from individual studies and audits across sub‐Saharan Africa. The functionality figures do not reflect national average figures.
Country of local study Water point non‐functionality Source
Angola 30% RWSN 2009[7]
Burkino Faso 25% RWSN 2009[7]
Benin 22% RWSN 2009[7]
Cambodia 22% SNV 2013[48]
DR Congo 33‐55% non‐functional or partially functional
(main issues: poor quality, handpump failure)
SNV 2013[48]
Ethiopia 18–35% (average, excl. abandoned supplies)
(40% due to technical failure, 13% watertable drawdown,
7% water quality)
Deneke and Hawassa 2008[49]
Ghana 21–30%
(main issues: mechanical failure of handpumps)
Samani et al 2013[50]
Adank et al 2012 (Triple‐S[14])
Kenya 25%
(main issues: 14% mechanical failure of handpumps, 11%
seasonal yield) A further 45% affected by technical issues
Welthungerlife 2011[51]
Madagascar 50%, with 16% not repaired within 1 year
(main issues: , insufficient yield, mechanical breakdown
of handpump)
UNICEF 2014[52]
Mali 14–41% (average 34%) Jones 2013[53]
Malawi 27% supplies abandoned
25% remaining supplies have inadequate yield or quality
(main issues: borehole construction, poor site selection)
Anscombe 1996[44]
Mozambique 20% Jansz 2011[37]
Niger 35% RWSN 2009[7]
Nigeria 32%
(main issues: seasonal depletion of water‐table, improper
borehole completion, and pump damage)
Owolabi et al. 1994[39]
Rwanda 41%
(main issues: insufficient yield, 50% supplies had
mechanical breakdown of handpump at least once per
year, 14% inadequate water quality)
WHO 2011[54]
Sierre Leone 31–40%, with additional 17% abandoned
(main issues identified to failure: seasonal yield,
mechanical breakdown of handpump)
MoWR 2012[8]
Tanzania 38%, with additional 7% functioning but in need of repair
(main issues: seasonal depletion of water‐table,
insufficient yield, water quality, mechanical breakdown
of handpump)
Taylor et al. 2009[26]
Uganda 16–20% average, up to 33%
(maim issues: insufficient yield, water quality)
56% of functioning handpumps, reported to fail and need
repair at least once a year
MWE 2013
Zimbabwe 38%
(main issues: mechanical failure, typical repair time 3
weeks)
Hoko etal. 2009[55]

The Research‐inspired Policy and Practice Learning in Ethiopia and the Nile Region (RiPPLE) programme has undertaken some of the most systematic studies of groundwater supply failure to date (Abede and Hawassa 2008[56]; Deneke and Hawassa 2008[49]). These studies collected qualitative and quantitative data on water point failure from community and district government‐level surveys and discussion groups, resource mapping, and physical (external) observations of water points. Institutional, environmental and financial causes of failure were examined. The studies found that 30–60% of water points were non‐functional in the Alaba woreda, and that whilst minor repairs could be completed within 2 weeks, major repairs often took 12 months to complete (Abede and Hawassa 2008[56]). The main underlying causes of failures from both studies were identified to be: inappropriate design of boreholes relative to local hydrogeology; excessive demand on individual water points; poor capacity and lack of backstopping support from district government; lack of technical and managerial capacity to run groundwater supplies (at all levels: government, communities, private sector); lack of coordination and communication, and a lack of clarity to roles and responsibilities between all actors; and lack of spare parts and financing (slow speed of maintenance) (Abede and Hawassa 2008[56]; Deneke and Hawassa 2008[49]). The findings also clearly reveal that supply sustainability cannot be reduced to a single cause and a comprehensive diagnostic assessment approach is required (Dessaelgo et al. 2013[57]).

The need for good quality siting, supervision, procurement, and management of drilling, as well as community engagement, financial capacity and external support are all common themes running through existing studies (Danert 2013[20]), but as yet, there is little clarity as to which should be given priority for future investments in groundwater‐based rural water supply to be able to deliver more sustainable supplies. To move beyond an understanding of how water points fail to determine why, requires a systems approach which recognises the many different components of the service delivery chains, including the water point itself, and a wide variety of factors (technical, social, institutional) contributing to failure, which interact and/or are interlinked. Moreover, a systematic diagnostic framework that allows for comparative analysis is essential to begin to understand causes of failure across different socio‐economic and physical environments.

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