Introduction: Groundwater
Management, Sanitation and Health.
– An overview of the roles and interaction
between groundwater and sanitation and
the potential impacts on community health.
Facilitator: R Owen
A new course exploring the nexus between
groundwater and sanitation
• Why a new course?
• Most domestic water in rural areas is groundwater –
so information about groundwater benefits and
threats is pertinent.
• The contrasts between surface water and
groundwater with respect to sanitation needs to be
better understood.
• Few people understand groundwater management
issues.
Groundwater Management for Sanitation & Health
• Benefits:
– Groundwater can readily be found at most localities – making it an easy
and cheap source to develop for domestic water supplies.
– Hygiene and sanitation are strongly correlated with adequate quantities
of readily available water.
– Groundwater is ‘drought resistant’ and most boreholes continue to
provide water long after streams and small surface dams have dried up.
– Health issues often arise when there are critical shortages of domestic
water.
– Groundwater may often be used as potable water without any treatment
due to lack of bacteria as a result of filtering effect of the ground.
– Water-borne diseases, such as cholera, are closely linked to bacterial
contaminated water – eg. e coli
Groundwater Management for Sanitation & Health
• Benefits:
– Groundwater is far less at risk of contamination from a variety of
sources, such as septic tanks, effluent disposal, industrial waste etc..
• Threats:
– Groundwater is still at risk from factors such as over-abstraction,
because the reservoir is invisible.
– Once contaminated, groundwater is very difficult to clean up
– Some aquifers are highly vulnerable, especially shallow aquifers
– Groundwater must be pumped with many implications
– There are recurrent costs required for O&M, necessitating community
structures to manage water points
– lack of well point maintenance is a major problem
– poor well-head protection can lead to direct pollution of the water
– point and diffuse pollution from a variety of sources can accumulate
slowly and unnoticed
Your Expectations
• What would you like to achieve during this
course?
• List critical groundwater management /
santitation issues that you face in your work.
• Can you identify the best approaches to address
these issues?
• Indicate one key change that you would like to
see within one year’s time with regards to
groundwater management for sanitation.