System evaluation and challenges of sustainable Water supply in arerti town, minjar-shenkora Woreda, amhara region, ethiopia

Abstract

Arerti town faces a serious unsustainable water supply problem. Even if the modern water supply system was installed since 1956’s still, the town is not getting adequate amount of water from the system. These means, the current water supply is not meet the town’s water demand. Sometimes, even the water is available; some of the community does not get enough amount of water from the system. Actually, the existing water supply system is designed for 20 years design period, but the problem is happen before 15 years left. As a result of these, residents are forced to get water from unprotected sources which are far from their homes or do not get efficient water for day to day activities. Besides, they also buy water frequently from vendors and incur additional cost. At the same time, because of system failure before completion of design period the water supply utility currently expose for another work with additional cost. In line with these the main objective of this study is to evaluate the system and assess the status of water supply, demand, its challenges and dynamics associated with inadequate water supply in Arerti town. A survey was conducted on a randomly selected 258 households, interview with purposefully selected key informants and focus groups. And also 83 nodes, 109 links/pipes (in different length, diameter and type), 1 tank, 4 reservoirs with 4 pumps and etc. properly were gathered for distribution network hydraulic performance evaluation. The institutional arrangement, the households’ water source accesses, availability of water, daily water consumption, water interruption rate, time taken and distance to fetch water, cost of water, water source status, demand and supply gap, amount of water delivered out of the town, distribution network pressure and velocity, challenge and cause of none sustainable water supply in the study area were touched by this study. The result of a survey of 258 sample households living in the town revels that 51.6% of the households get water 3 times per week for a few hour. During water interruption, 53.5% of households do not get water trough yard or house connection and 70% of the respondent say there is no equal distribution of water in the town. Water consumption is 12.2 l/c/d which is below WHO standards; and regarding the distance and time taken to fetch water, 43 percent of household travel above 1000m and 39.9 percent of households take above 30 minute. The average total water demand at base year 2014 is 1548.13m 3 /day, and the forecasted required amount of water for 2020 to achieving GTP II is 3237.12m 3 /day. The amount of water delivered out of the town is approximately equal to 20% of the total consumption of water in 2014. The household in low pressure zone especially on Junction-19, Junction-20 and Junction-30 coupled with inadequate water supply do not get enough amount of water almost in all time. The root causes of the challenging problems are institutional, financial, human and material resource constraints. That is, the water supplying service in the town is unsustainable; it is socially inequitable, economically inefficient. Therefore, this study presents the following recommendations to ensure sustainable water supply in the study town. These are; solve rural community water problem, use alternative power source, demand and supply management, use existed best alternatives, facilitate credit, use pressure zoning method, use alternative water source with pipe water and adapting new technology.