Harmful water from a river or a well – Peter’s impossible choice
Many students at IHE Delft have their own personal experience of struggling to access safe water. Some have walked long distances to water sources, others have had to rely on dirty water. These struggles are often a key motivation in their IHE Delft studies, and they provide for unique perspectives of the study topics.
When Etukutan Peter, a student in the joint GroundwatCh Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree programme, was a child in Kenya, he faced stark choices in accessing water. Peter, a member of the Groundwater Correspondent Network, shares in a story how he trekked to the Turkwel River to get water: “It provided sustenance and despair in equal measure, its muddy waters reflecting the pollution contributed by the lands it touched.” Making matters worse, its banks were insecure due to fighting among local groups.
Effects of excessive fluoride
The alternative was using a handpump to access salty water with unsafe levels of fluoride, Peter writes: “In those days, and regrettably even in the present, government and non-governmental organizations would drill wells and provide water sources with well-meaning intentions. However, the community was often left in the dark about the water's quality and whether it was truly safe for consumption or irrigation. Once the wells were drilled, the projects would conclude, and crucial information would disappear with those who initiated them.”
Peter only learned as an adult that his brown teeth - which are common in his community - are a result of the contaminated water. “In the absence of viable alternatives, the resilient residents of Turkana had little choice but to rely on this perilous water source for their survival. It was a cruel dilemma, a choice between dehydration and the insidious effects of (excessive) fluoride. As they drank from the lake’s unforgiving waters, they unknowingly subjected themselves to a slow, silent battle against an invisible enemy,” he writes.
Eradicating water scarcity
As solutions for the community’s dilemma, Peter discusses sand rivers and filters, but in the long term, he argues for a desalination plant that can treat the groundwater and water from a salty lake as the solution: “Such an initiative would transform Turkana’s water landscape, making water scarcity a thing of the past.”
The GroundwatCh Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree programme is coordinated by IHE Delft in partnership with Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon, Portugal, and the Technical University of Dresden, Germany. The Groundwater Correspondent Network is an initiative by the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre.
Read Peter’s whole story: Turkana’s Silent Struggle.