Irrigation water that was used for consumption.
Makeshift water tank.
The village of West Dangiang is located in the district of North Lombok. This community utilized an irrigation ditch as their primary source of water. This ditch was located close enough to the houses, so that the entire village had access to it. As you will see from the pictures above, the water is clearly not suitable for drinking. However, as they had no other water source available, they were forced to drink, bathe, wash dishes, and cook with this water despite the poor quality. They used a system of pipes to bring the water from the irrigation ditch to homemade water tanks built from bamboo and tarps. The sediment was allowed to settle and the remaining water was used for the purposes listed above.
Public water filters.
In late 2018, after the earthquakes, our Access Life Lombok Water Team completed a survey of this water project and agreed to work with this community. As they did not have access to another water source, we put forth a proposal to build and install public filtration units. We planned to install them in strategic locations where houses were grouped together. Each unit consists of 3-4 Sawyer water filters installed in a 350-liter water tank. We installed two units in late 2018 as a trial. We agreed to come back and install an additional four units in 2019 if the community actually used these water filter stations.
In early 2019 we finished the project. All 6 water filter stations have been installed and are being used by this community. We also provided education about the importance of drinking clean water and a “how-to” on properly cleaning and maintaining the filters. We followed up several times after the project was completed to ensure the filters were being used and to ensure the community didn’t have any issues or questions. This project was a success and the Dangiang community now have access to clean water.
