tubewell is technical problem. Need to fix

November 21, 2010 - Rudi Dundas and Chris Majors

Interviewed owner's wife and daughters. They were not particularly pleased with the quality of the water. It was turbid and a chlorine smell. A pipe was bent during installation leading to the higher turbidity and lower flow rates. The Project Well fieldworkers addressed the problem with them.

November 21, 2010 - Rudi Dundas and Chris Majors

Interviewed owner's wife and daughters. They were not particularly pleased with the quality of the water. It was turbid and a chlorine smell. A pipe was bent during installation leading to the higher turbidity and lower flow rates. The Project Well fieldworkers addressed the problem with them.

Monthly Status report of July 2010

We speculated that the pipe was compressed by the hydraulic force of the water since the pipe was thin (6 mm).The dimensions of the PVC pipe were 20 feet in length, 8 inches in diameter and 6 mm in thickness. This resulted in two problems: (1) scarcity of water in summer in some locations and (2) there was a technical issue: during the monsoon of 2009 when the flexible pipes of four dugwells got stuck inside the inserted tube. Hence, to solve these issues in 2010, we are using larger pipes of 10 inches (N=30) and 8 inches (N=20) in diameter and 8 mm thickness, of length 20 foot for bore-dugwells (N=40) and 30 foot for bore-wells (N=10). The cost of pipes of increased dimension is double that of the previously used dimension (INR 9,185 vs. INR 19,500 & 12,400 of 10” and 8” diameter respectively for 20 foot pipes).

February 2010 site visits with AWS staff

I work with Meera on Project Well, in our Berkeley office. My husband (who is unaffiliated with Project Well) and I were taken around by AWS staff to visit several dugwell sites in February 2010.

This well is in use but no one is really using it. It is located in the back of a schoolteacher’s yard. The water tastes OK, they say. They are storing the chlorine in a clear bottle, not correctly. The schoolteacher, Sachidulal Sarkar, (age 50), was worried about bacteria in the water—how could he ensure there was no bacteria? If he were assured there was no bacteria, he would drink the water. The water is chlorinated every seven days. Without a filter, he never uses the water. He and other villagers only use it for cooking (he appeared to be a leader in the community). One kilometer away was a deep tubewell, which people use. There are about 100 people or 20 families in this community. The teacher implied that if he could see lab tests regarding the bacteria (or field test kits), he would feel safer using the dugwell water. After chlorination, the water is absolutely clear and sparkling, he said. At the end of the chlorination cycle, it is a little cloudy. He would like the water tested at the end of the chlorination cycle. We tried the water and it tastes good, looks good. Dennis looked in the well and saw the water level was about 3 feet high, and thought perhaps there was not enough water, and hence perhaps the presence of minerals might be what was making it cloudy.