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The WVU Chapter of Engineers Without Borders has been working since 2017 to assess, design, and implement a water distribution system in rural Uganda. Currently, the village of Kabughabugha lacks access to reliable potable water and women/children must walk uphill for over 1000 meters to the nearest spring source multiple times a day. This leaves no time for education or empowerment in the community. The proposed pipeline will bring sustenance to the village as well as running water to a new Health Clinic. This infrastructure is critical to the lives of men, women, and children who we will educate on hygiene and pipeline maintenance.
EWB has spent countless hours working to provide a high quality engineering design that would otherwise be impossible to achieve in the village. Due to travel complications in the last couple years, the project has been conducted remotely. After three years of planning, the entire pipeline design was approved to be constructed this past July 2020. On September 4th, 2020, the remote construction of the pipeline system was completed. The community now has access to water in the center of their village, and the Health Clinic has a faucet with running water and a handwashing station outside for members of the community to use. The completion of this phase has allowed us to look ahead towards other ways we can benefit this community and communities nearby.
The village now has access to the spring source right outside their doors, but the water still needs to be boiled in order to drink. The water from the spring source contains fecal coliforms, which makes it unsafe to drink. In our next phase we plan to implement a filter/decontamination system towards the upper end of the pipeline to provide potable water directly to the village. Our plan is to use a chlorine distribution system to safely decontaminate the water for a given flow rate.
There is also a neighboring village named Kabughabugha, who suffers from the same limited water supply as Kabughabugha. We also plan to extend the pipeline into this village to provide more people with accessible, potable water. This pipeline extension will include about 1500m of additional pipeline, and a water catchment tank towards that village.