By Wesley Langat
BOMET, Kenya, Nov 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Monica Kirui, 30, a mother of five from Kipsegon, remembers queueing for hours as she waited to fetch water from the local springs, the only source of fresh drinking water in her village in the southern part of Kenya’s Rift Valley.
One of the few springs in the area that has water year round, Kipsegon attracts people from all over. In the past, some would wait overnight to get their water, often contaminated by so many people dipping containers into the springs, Kirui said.
But that has not been a problem since April, when a concrete barrier was built around the springs to help keep the water clean and guide it through pipes ending in four taps, allowing villagers to collect their water quickly and safely.
“I’m happy because I no longer worry about how I will get water, nor spend the whole day looking for water. I have time to concentrate on my other house chores,” Kirui said.
Across Bomet County, springs like Kipsegon are being protected and rehabilitated under a government project that aims to increase access to drinking water sources and boost biodiversity, said Fredrick Ruto, the county’s assistant director for water and irrigation.
In some cases, people have been trekking up to 5 km (3 miles) to get water from rivers, he noted.
“The main objective of our programme is to ensure everyone gets safe, clean drinking water for both domestic and livestock use,” he added.
Launched in 2018, in partnership with local “Water Resources Users Associations” (WRUA) and the USAID-funded Sustainable Water Partnership, the Spring Protection Programme is part of the Kenyan government’s nationwide watershed conservation plan.
It involves erecting walls or fencing to prevent people from contaminating the springs, marking the exact points where water flows out of aquifers and building supply systems to help villagers tap into the resource more easily.
So far, the initiative has made improvements to more than 60 out of at least 100 mapped springs – each providing drinking water for up to 1,500 people – and has built about 130 ponds to catch rainwater in dry areas, according to Ruto.
The programme has proven so successful that the local government has more than doubled its funding this financial year to 11 million Kenyan shillings ($100,600), he noted.
“For the springs that we have (improved), we have witnessed an increase of water,” he said, without providing figures.
WATER SHORTAGES
Bomet is one of four counties that make up Kenya’s share of the Mara River basin, where Ruto said there had been persistent shortages of fresh drinking water for the past two decades.
The majority of the county’s population of about 876,000, especially in southern areas, struggle to find water in dry seasons, which can last up to three months at a time, he noted.
According to the 2019 U.N. World Water Development Report, less than a quarter of the population of sub-Saharan Africa has access to safe drinking water.
John Hawuory, an independent geologist, said droughts fuelled by climate change together with human activity, particularly agriculture, had interrupted the natural processes that generate river flow and allow groundwater to recharge.
“These disturbance factors – such as soil erosion, farming and the use of fertilisers – reduce water flows, (as well as) water levels in reservoirs fed by seasonal rivers and inland groundwater levels in the entire region,” he said.
