Wells & Water Pumps
The community is in the throws of a large-scale water project. While most people have enough water for household needs very few have sufficient water for agricultural purposes. That and hand-liftng water from a 15 feet well and carrying it a couple hundred meters to a garden discourages most people from the 3 – 4 hour exercise irrigation inevitably demands. We’ve looked at multiple large-scale delivery systems but none are anything remotely sustainable. So, while not much cheaper, SP is undertaking a massive hand-dug well project.
It’s actually pretty cool – you sit a concrete ring on the ground (one that’s about 3 feet in diameter), stand inside it, and start digging away the dirt underneath. As it descends you keep adding rings on top until you are about 10 to 15 feet down with a big stack of rings around you keeping the dirt from caving in. If you are lucky, you don’t hit water till about 8 feet at which point you have a diesel powered pump madly sucking the water out of your well as it fills up around your ankles. Generally you give up once you are about 6 feet below the water table. And presto! You have a well. The Cambodians can’t afford to line their wells, so they manage to dig about 6 to 8 feet before they get claustrophobic and nervous of the walls caving in on them. If your well runs dry during the dry season you’re out of luck. With the concrete ring method, you can dig wells down 20 feet or more ensuring you always have water. Even if your well goes dry you can always just hop down (or be lowered on a rope for the less spry who can’t handle a 15 food vertical drop), start digging, and as the whole column of concrete rings shift down, add more rings on top until you hit water again. It’s a beautiful thing.
Not only are we lining and deepening their wells but we are capping them (a novelty that keeps frogs, dogs, children, and other pollutants from contaminating your well) and putting on a pump. We have two flavors of pumps: rope pumps and treadle pumps. Rope pumps are a nifty rig that takes a bike tire, crank, and a bunch of rope with little toggles and magically draws out water at about 8 cubic meters per hour as you stand there and crank your arms off. The treadle pump is like a Cambodian stairmaster that pumps out water while burning calories at the same time. In our community which has so many amputee’s, the nature of the handicap determines the pump. Folks with one or no legs get a rope pump and folks with no arms get a treadle pump. It’s a fairly equitable solution and one they are pretty excited about. If my flippant and un-pc remarks about the physically challenged disturb you, fret not. For these folks it’s a fact of life and one they readily make light of despite it’s inherent hardships in this environment. Shoot, they even had a kickboxing tournament held in the community last month. Ever seen a kickboxing match between a one-legged man and a man with only one arm? It’s hoot! No removing of prosthetics for use as weapons though, that’s cheating. Veil Thom even has a disabled volleyball team that competes nationally. Last year we had a group of high-profile donors out visiting and they decided to play the disabled team and got their butts smoked. It was a fun time.
Anyway, back to the water system. We estimate about 75% of the community will participate. About 50% of the community will be able to pay the $12 fee which they established as their portion of responsibility of the water system in addition to providing the labor. SP will also work with the 20% poorest in the community (some of whom make less than 75 cents a day), allowing them to donate work time to the community land as payment for their water systems since they can’t afford the fee.
Overall we hope to put in 225 wells in the next three months which will be very exciting for the community.
