Together with our Kenyan partner Irrico we are installing a large scale innovative rainwater harvesting project at the Girls’ High School in Kwale, Kenya.
Kwale is located in the south of Kenya and has been suffering lately from increasing drought periods. For the school it ment that the hygiene situation came under pressure and that drinking water is of poor quality or simply not available. Once the new project is delivered the school will be far less dependent on water deliveries of local water authorities.
The captured water is used both for agricultural- as well as for human consumption purposes:
Water for human consumption is collected from the many roofs of buildings located on the main grounds. Once captured, the water is filtered making use of self- cleaning filters after which fine grain filters take out fine dirt parts. Then the water is stored in steel tanks with a combined capacity of 320.000 liters. Upon consumption the water is pumped through other ultra-fine filters and a solar powered UV WaterBox taking out harmful E-coli and coliform bacteria.
Surface water runoff, used for agricultural application, is collected in ground drains. This type of water, which is obviously of a lesser quality. Once captured in the drains the water routed into large foil tanks having a total capacity of over 1,400.000 liters.
With two rain seasons per year, the total rainwater system will be able to capture around 2.500.000 liters of rainwater on yearly basis. The founders of the Girls School, the Dutch Verkaart Development Team, with generous support of the RoFa Foundation (Bergschenhoek, Netherlands) aim to deliver a financial sustainable water system. Therefor a water shop is installed at the main road selling part of the purified clean and safe drinking water to commuters. The income generated will be used to pay for operation and maintenance of the rainwater harvesting facilities
