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Borehole - Sustainability

Borehole - Sustainability: Encyclopedia II - Borehole - Sustainability

A worldwide research effort by the World Bank in the 1970s and 1980s sought to discover ways to overcome the sustainability barrier to borehole use. It concluded that: Borehole pump parts should be designed to be easily replicable by local industry (as the World Bank sponsored, public domain Afridev pump design is intended to be). Standardisation within a region is desirable, to encourage a reliable supply of spare parts and skilled mechanics. Full capacity and responsibility for borehole maintenance should rest with a committee of users, not outside agencies (a principle referred to as Village Level ...

Borehole: Encyclopedia II - Borehole - Sustainability

Borehole - Sustainability

A worldwide research effort by the World Bank in the 1970s and 1980s sought to discover ways to overcome the sustainability barrier to borehole use. It concluded that:

Borehole pump parts should be designed to be easily replicable by local industry (as the World Bank sponsored, public domain Afridev pump design is intended to be).
Standardisation within a region is desirable, to encourage a reliable supply of spare parts and skilled mechanics.
Full capacity and responsibility for borehole maintenance should rest with a committee of users, not outside agencies (a principle referred to as Village Level Operating and Maintenance, or VLOM).

According to some commentators, this approach still fails too regularly, and improved rope and bucket wells - despite their higher risk of contamination - would in many cases provide a more sustainable solution. [2] A working example of such improved open well systems, the Rope Pump, is widely deployed in Nicaragua [3]. A survey of failure rates among World Bank approved Afridev borehole pumps is provided in the appendices of Gabriele, below.