Utilities – Water, Sewage and Waste Management

Water

With the wonderful help of “Meal a Day” we are building a sustainable and cost effective village  water system.  Adjacent to our land was a disused British-built water pumping station.  We have now refurbished this and it has a capacity of 180,000 litres collected from the water source.  With a solar pump, this sends the water 1km to the top of the village, where Milla Tanks and Shankadas (local suppliers) have donated water tanks.  The water goes through a filtration system that is fed to the homes.  It will also be fed to a water bagging factory.

Sewage

The grey water from the houses is piped to under-soil irrigation, whilst the black sewage is taken to long term tanks.  These fill up over about 18 months and then the effluent is switched to a second tank.  The first rests for the next 18 months and then dug out and the 2 tank process reversed.

Waste Management

We have a clear plan for managing site waste.  This includes the building of an incinerator, based on a community cooker idea shared with us and to be funded by the Princes Foundation in then UK.

Power

Within 2 miles, a significant solar farm is being built.  We have surveyed our requirements and believe the village will need about 0.8MW to power, the businesses, homes schools etc.  It will cost £80,000 ($100,000) to bring the power to the village which we need to find.  We would then need to connect and meter the power to the different users across the site.

In the meantime, using our own solar panels saves money and we use generators as there is no local (NPA) power connected near our village.