April 4, 2008

Kenya Contacts: Mary Obiero, CWS East Africa/Nairobi, cell phone: +254 020 728 606481, mobiero@cwsea.org Micah McCoy, CWS East Africa/Nairobi, cell phone: +254 020710295033, mmccoy@cwsea.org

Kenyan officials, climate-challenged West Pokot village celebrate new sustainable clean water source

Akiriamet, West Pokot Region, Kenya--Competition for water and pastureland is a long-time source of conflict in Kenya's semi-arid northwest. But today (April 4) Kenyan officials, non-governmental agency representatives, and residents of remote Akiriamet village in the country's West Pokot district are celebrating a new and sustainable source of fresh, local water that may also help bring an end to the area's territorial battles over dwindling water supplies and viable grazing land.

In a ceremony marking the completion of Akiriamet's new sub-surface sand dam, Akiriamet community members and leaders, representatives from Kenya's Department of Water, provisional administration, humanitarian agency Church World Service, the Kenyan grassroots women's organization Yang'at, the local peacebuilding organization SIKOM, and local media hailed the village's new community-managed clean water resource.

The new Akiriamet sand dam is one of several either completed or being constructed in the more arid, water-challenged regions of Kenya and across the border in neighboring northern Uganda, as part of the African Water for Life/Water for Peace program of the global humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS).

The sub-surface dams are a simple but highly effective technology that involves constructing a concrete dam under the surface of a dry riverbed. A sand dam, which costs about US$5,000 to construct, slows the flow of water in the riverbed during the rainy season, causing more water to sink into the sand, which produces an underground reservoir of clean water.

Sand dams can hold up to 2.6 million gallons of water and provide clean water for a thousand or more people, for livestock and for gardens.

West Pokot's rains are due soon. After the area's rainy season and as the dry season begins, typically sometime in August, a shallow well can be built next to the Akiriamet dam, to hold clean water that's retrieved from the underground dam.

Water for Peace sand dam development projects are being guided locally by the Yang'at women's organization--appropriately if not ironically, given that women and girls are the region's traditional water fetchers, typically walking many miles daily to bring water for their families, livestock and homes. To ensure project sustainability, construction is coupled with community planning meetings, peacebuilding workshops, and training in ownership, management, and maintenance of local water systems.

In Kenya, the government owns the water, but as climate conditions worsen, the government is embracing the idea of letting local communities like Akiriamet manage their own water systems.

Mary Concepter Obiero, Church World Service East Africa socio-economic development coordinator, says, "The Water for Peace program's primary objectives are to provide reliable, year-round sources of clean water and sanitation for communities that are culturally appropriate, technically viable, environmentally sustainable, and can be managed by the communities themselves.

"But," she says, "it is also our vision that having local sources of clean water may also enable herdsmen to keep their livestock in their home territory in droughts and break this particular age-old cause of conflict."

Ultimately, more than 4,000 people--2,000 in Kenya and 2,000 in Uganda--are expected to benefit from the CWS Water for Peace sand dams program.

Media Contact: Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676; lcrosson@churchworldservice.org Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526; jdragin@gis.net