Techniques for Providing Fresh Water to Arid Regions Essay

Techniques for Providing Fresh Water to Arid Regions - Essay Example For a pipeline, a network of pipelines will have to be constructed so as to connect various users to the water source. Acquisition of the pipes and the pumps costs a lot of money and the capital costs may force a country to borrow the required resources (World Bank, 1994). Besides, maintenance of the pipelines and checking of water quality should be done constantly, and this again adds to the overall costs which may be extreme in the event the pipeline length is long (Grossman, 2004).Construction of small dams can easily be done with locally available materials and human labour, making it cheaper. According to a study carried out in Kenya, a single sand dam with a capacity of holding 2,000m3 with a life span of 50 years only costs US$ 7,500 (Borst and Haas, 2006). For the large dams, the construction can easily run into billions of dollars considering the scale of the project, materials requires and the machinery and equipment employed not forgetting the technical personnel on the gr ound. IFPRI (1997) observes that the maintenance of dams mainly includes dredging the dams to maintain its depth by scooping the silt deposited on the floor of the dam. This is a capital intensive exercise and it may run into a lot of money. Overall, costs of large dams are so high and can only be funded by large investments in the project probably the government with the help of financial partners.Compared to other methods of provision of water to dry areas, ground water provides the cheaper alternative.