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Services
Safe Drinking Water
Although Nepal is naturally bestowed with ample water resources only 82 percent of population have access to safe and clean drinking water. Improved services such as piped water and covered wells make up for almost 93 percent of water coverage in urban areas and 79 percent in rural areas (with 6.7 percent water piped to the house, 32.5 outside the house and 39.6 percent using covered wells). The remaining have to depend upon the conventional sources like unsafe wells, lake, river, spring, etc. A UNICEF report in 2006, estimates that around 13,000 children die every year due to water related diseases before they reach their fifth birthday. Thus, to support rural communities have access to safe drinking water NEWAH supports approximately 80 projects a year through all its regional offices. NEWAH's water supply system mainly consists of Gravity flow and Tube well systems that serve communities with drinking water in the hills and Tarai respectively.
Gravity Flow Schemes
NEWAH supports in tap construction and water source protection through gravity flow schemes in the Hill areas. A typical gravity flow project consists of spring or a stream source. Prior to the implementation of a drinking water project in the hills, the source is tested and then brought into use in areas where it is found to be safe.
Water from the source is collected through a catchment into an intake. A sedimentation tank is constructed where necessary to clean the water. The water travels from the intake to a distribution tank and then to various reservoir tanks. A number of tap stands are linked to each reservoir tank. Because the source and reservoir tanks are located above the water points, gravity causes the water to travel through the system.
Tube Well Schemes
In a typical Tarai project in the plains, shallow tube wells are installed near to clusters of houses to extract ground water using a hand pump. Presently, to solve the growing problem of arsenic contamination in the water in the Tarai and to ensure the use of arsenic free tube well water, arsenic testing is mandatory in the Tarai projects.
Iron and coli form tests are also conducted for ensuring safe and reliable drinking water.
Other Technological Options
NEWAH concentrates on increasing its support to difficult geographical locations and to serve poor people. These areas include places far from the road head, the inner Tarai where the easy access of groundwater is difficult and hill communities that are without alternatives sources and cannot benefit from the standard gravity flow schemes. Thus, alternative technologies such as deep tube well, overhead tanks, fog water collection and rain water harvesting are adopted to serve these areas.
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