Assessing Sustainability Of Urban Water Supply And Distribution System: A Case Study Of Boditi Town

Abstract

Population growth has put pressure on current water supply throughout the world. Similarly in our country the supply of water to satisfy the demand of water for towns is a crucial problem. The study town drinking water coverage and per capita demand is less than the standard and the people of the town are complaining about water supply most of the time, due to facing scarcity of supply, even there exists water supply; some parts of the distribution system not afford water to private customer connection. This study was conducted to assess sustainability of urban water supply and distribution system. Water distribution network system was developed and evaluated by water-Cad 6.5 soft-ware and GPS data, Arc-GIS 10.1 soft-ware used to delineate study area, water loss estimated by water balance method and geometric growth method used for population estimation. Primary data were obtained from face to face interview and questionnaire with study area livelihoods, Boditi town water service office workers and key informants, viewing sampling locations and water point and photograph of relevant site. Secondary data obtained from: related studies, reports of town water service office and from Zonal Water Resource, Mineral and Energy office, journals, and meteorology offices at zonal and regional level. Statistical method used to analyze the data obtained from both data sources. Based on the findings, for private connection users, for public tap users, in-house connection and the averaged current water consumption of the town were 16.7, 5.8, 37.9, and 11.9L/c/d respectively and the current water supply coverage of the town was at the level of 69.6%. The average water loss of the water distribution system found to be 33.2%. The distribution system analysis showed that 9% of junctions had above maximum, 2% of junction had below minimum and 89% of junctions had normal operating pressures. 30% of pipes in the distribution system had head loss greater than 15 m/Km. The current water production was estimated to be 371,535 m3 /year and the projected population and water demand for 2023 estimated to be 88079 and 1012688m3 /year respectively. This indicates that, water supply has to be raised by 641153m3 /year. The sustainable water supply can be assured through demand based supply and supplementing the existing supply with additional sources.