A sand dams programme mooted during Governor Julius Malombe's first term in office between 2013 and 2017 to combat cyclical food and water insecurity in Kitui is bearing fruit.
About seven years since the sand dams water harvesting initiative was introduced in Kitui, communities that had the advantage of having the projects sited within their vicinities are gleefully reaping the benefits.
One such group is the Mutwawewa community members in Mwingi central subcounty, where following the construction of a sand dam in their area the hitherto perennial water scarcity has been consigned to the days of yore.
A resident of the area, Mary Mwendwa, told journalists during a recent visit that since the sand dam was put up by the county government of Kitui the previous painstaking search for water has been eased.
She said the water table in the seasonal Mutwawewa river where they had dug shallow wells upstream of the sand dam project had raised considerably and residents no longer needed to dig deep wells in the sand to get water.
We recently found Mwendwa scooping water from a shallow well on the the Mutwawewa sand bed and she happily agreed to giving us an interview.
She said the crowding that used to characterise water holes that at times used to be as deep as 10 feet as residents waited for their turn to draw water was no more.
“I think sand dams are the panacea to water problems in Kitui. Before this sand dam was constructed here, local women used to spend days and nights at the river bed waiting for their turn to draw water. It could last hours.
"That is now a thing of the past as it now lasts only minutes to fill jerrycans of water and return home to attend to other pressing domestic chores,” Mwendwa said.
She added that the sand dam has also availed water for livestock within reach, even as more aggressive community members have taken up agribusiness by using the water to grow vegetables for sale to earn an income.
Further afield at Kithyoko river in Mwingi West subcounty where a sand dam has been constructed together with a sump well, the project has provided a lifeline for 26-year-old Alice Wayua and her neighbours.
The residents have taken to utilising the water from the sand dam to do irrigated agriculture.
During a recent visit to that area, we found Wayua watering her kales and spinach.
She said setting up of the sand dam in the area encouraged her and other like-minded neighbours to take up irrigated farming. The mother of two said she harvests and sells her produce at the nearby market centres three times in a week.
Wayua said water is abstracted from the sand dam through a sump well that is installed with a pump that directs the water to reservoirs that directly supply water to all the farms. She said some of the water ends up in a trough to water livestock.
The Kitui county irrigation engineer Paul Kaleve explained that sand dams are reinforced concrete walls built across seasonal rivers and trap huge volumes of water under heaps of accumulated sand deposited over a period of time.
He added that a sump well is an underground cemented tank, constructed next to a sand dam from where water is pumped to supply water kiosks, farms and other outlets depending on the intended use for the water.
This water harvesting technology that has turned out to be ideal to solving water scarcity problems is what the county government of Kitui is adopting at full scale in a bid to to alleviate food and water insecurity.
In the next five years, the county government of Kitui projects to build 2,400 sand dams with each of the 40 wards in the county getting 60 sand dams at the end of the projected period, said the Kitui county executive for water and irrigation Peter Nkunda.
“The main reason we initiated the sand dams programme is to address food security challenges in our county. We are doing 120 dams this financial year and we are already at 377 sand dams,” Nkunda said.
He lamented that rain-fed agriculture had proved unreliable due to incessant crop failure caused by poor and erratic rains. He said a simple sand dam could be build at a cost of Sh1 million but one with a sump well component would cost up to Sh4 million to set up.
Nkunda said that, ultimately, the county government of Kitui envisions a situation where in the next five years at least 70 per cent of the irrigable land in the county would put to use through water harnessed from sand dams.
He lamented that out of 11,024 hectares of potentially irrigable land only 25 per cent is currently utilised. Nkunda said only 3,095 hectares of the potential Kitui land are under irrigation.
The CEC said the sand dams project motivation was to ensure food availability to the residents of Kitui as the Constitution of Kenya 2010 demands that national and county governments must ensure the peoples’ right to food.
Kitui county chief officer for irrigation Bretta Mwangangi said sand dams were most ideal for capturing massive runoff water after the rains as they are designed to retain both sand and water.
“The areas around the sand dams should therefore be ideal for irrigation since the purpose of the structure is mainly to provide water for irrigation. The site, too, should have substantial sand deposits to enable more water storage,” the chief officer said in an interview .
She said the sand dams programme was in furtherance of Governor Julius Malombe’s 2022 pre-election manifesto in which he pledged to construct 2,400 sand dams across Kitui in five years.
“The aim of the sand dams project is to provide water for irrigation and reduce reliance on rain-fed agriculture. This in the long run is geared towards food sufficiency,” Mwangangi said.
