Why digging wells is not always the solution.
When people hear that I work for a water nonprofit, their first question is usually, “So you drill wells?” I then explain that while a well might be a starting point, at Healing Waters International, we go beyond just drilling a well. We always include a comprehensive water purification system to ensure that the water is reliably safe for drinking.
In certain places, a well might be the most viable raw water source. This is the case for most of the communities Healing Waters works with in Haiti, especially in sites near sea level with no other reliable source of water. However, in Haitian coastal towns, well water tends to be salty. In other places, like Kenya, the water may have fluoride, or it may contain heavy metals or other contaminants that make it unsafe to drink. Safe water is about more than just bacterial contamination; there are all sorts of contaminants that can make their way into groundwater.
Even just considering bacterial contamination, the WHO has reported that globally, 37% of boreholes had fecal contamination (source: “Safely Managed Drinking Water”). This highlights that not all water from improved water sources is guaranteed to be safe.
All the information mentioned so far assumes that well water is the most accessible source of water, but that’s far from true. In some places, the need for increasingly deeper wells makes them prohibitively expensive. In other cases, the landscape and water tables make drilling wells impossible. Often, there are other water sources nearby that are abundant, but they present other contamination issues beyond bacteria, such as agricultural runoff. In these cases, purification is absolutely necessary, and drilling a well would not be part of the solution.
Lastly, wells with hand pumps are meant to serve up to 250-300 people to maintain reasonable access and minimize wear and wait times. Therefore, a community of 3,000 people would require 10 wells to offer sufficient water access. For large populations, there is often a better, more centralized solution. (The difference in impact between access to piped water at home and walking to an improved water source like boreholes is a topic for another time).
It’s important to note that the water crisis is massive and there is no one solution. Wells are an important part of the WASH landscape, but focusing solely on wells can overlook water safety, especially in places with challenging water profiles, or it could underleverage abundant surface water.
Healing Waters International builds comprehensive community-wide water projects that are tailor-made to the individual water purification needs of the area to ensure long term sustainability and optimal water purification.