World Bank lauds Kitui for sand dam water harvesting technology

Kitui County government's strategy to harvest water from sand dams on dry riverbeds has attracted a thumps up from World Bank.

World Bank’s task team leader, K-Wash Programme, Pascaline Wanjiku, noted that the sand dams model of harnessing rain run-off  water through sand dams built across Kitui’s dry riverbeds was ideal.

She said World Bank  had already tried it and the same technology was successful in the neighbouring Somalia.

Wanjiku spoke in Kitui when she lead a team of  WB officials comprising those from the Somali Mission, in touring and inspecting sand dams projects  in Kitui county on Tuesday.  

The team that had earlier paid a courtesy call on the Kitui CEC  for water and Irrigation Peter Nkunda, was in the county to sample sand dams technology being used to improve sustainable access to water.

They visited the Mutendea sand dam project as well as the  Mwitasyano-Kwa Kilui-Matulani -Kwakilya water pipeline project that serves 10,000 people from water sourced from Mwitasyani sand dam.

Kitui is among the 19 counties in Kenya picked to benefit from WB’s Programme for Results under the K-Wash programes in which the counties would be reimbursed the cost of all water provision projects that meet specified parameters.

During the courtesy, Wanjiku agreed with Nkunda that compared with boreholes, sand dams water harvesting technology was more viable and sustainable than borehole supported water schemes, that hardly last long.

Nkunda had told the WB team that Kitui was moving away from the drilling of so many boreholes because sinking many boreholes, was untenable, as the underground water reserves had also shrunk.

“It is not sustainable. With this issues of climate change, boreholes are not appropriate models for accessing water to the communities,” Nkunda said.

He noted Kitui was focusing on the sand dams and sump well technology, and in the current financial year, 120 sand dams would be built across all the 40 wards in Kitui.

“Luckily here in Kitui we have many rivers which provide an opportunity for us to do sand dams. They enable us to harness a lot of water sustainably instead of have to rely on underground water,” the CEC said.

He added that the technology involves the trapping of surface run off  water in sand without allowing it to drain all the way to the Indian ocean  whenever it rains.

“We stop it and trap the water in sump wells next to sand dams. We then reticulated the water to the people either for domestic use or supporting agricultural activities,” Nkunda informed the team.

Wanjiku said although in many cases boreholes have abundantly been drilled, a lot of community water schemes attached to them fail to operate optimally due the drying up of boreholes.

She said the counties in the Programmes for Results would use water provision technologies ideal in their areas as long as the projects ultimately met WB set parameters, including low cost and environmental and social safe guards.

“At the end of the day as much as you can show you have met the criterion for sustainable improved water access the disbursement will be done,” she said.

Chantal Richey, a senior water supply and sanitation specialists, World Bank ( Somalia), encouraged the use of sand dams noting that it had proved a potential solution to water problems.

“We have had some incredible success with sand dams in Somalia,” she said.

She said upon realisation that 67 per cent of boreholes in Somalia had failed,  the WB  resorted to sand dams that became the potential solutions to water problems in Somalia.