Team Leader: Dave Longtin (dlongtin@hdlalaska.com)

Clients: Liban Zone Residents

Location: Liban Zone in south-central Ethiopia

Initiation Date: Fall 2006

General Description:

Water availability in the Liban Zone, Ethiopia, is a flood-or-famine proposition. The Liban Zone consists of 44 villages and nearly a quarter of a million people spread out across a high, dry plateau near Ethiopia’s border with Kenya. The region gets approximately 27 inches of rain annually, but most of that rain is concentrated in two wet seasons – Gu in the spring (14 inches) and Deyr in the fall (7 inches). In the months preceding a wet season, villagers often have to walk several miles to collect water from one of the many “pans” (water storage reservoirs) scattered around the region. Even those villages located close to a pan are often forced to walk great distances to retrieve water, as the pans are hand-dug and shallow, and therefore prone to both infiltration and evaporation. Ironically, there is concern in some villages about digging local reservoirs because of the flooding that sometimes occurs in one of the wet seasons.

Project:  

EWB-SCA decided to collaborate with the Engineers Without Borders chapter in Seattle (EWB-PSP – Puget Sound Partners) and with Global Poverty Action (GPA), a non-governmental organization founded by a man who grew up in the Liban Zone, to address this problem. In January 2007, the project managers from the Alaska and Seattle chapters met the executive director of GPA in Ethiopia to assess what could be done. Over the course of nearly two weeks, it was learned that dam-repair projects lined up for the EWB chapters (Boho for SCA, Dhibu Qordobo for PSP) could not be completed. In the case of the Boho dam, the villages around the dam had long since relocated after the reservoir failed in the 1980s, and the road to the area was impassible. And in the case of the D.Q. dam, the project was already being completed by a previous resident who now owns a contracting firm.

Project Status:

Although the projects that were originally planned will not be completed by EWB, the site assessment opened other doors. PSP is looking at repairing a dam in the village of Boji that burst approximately 5 years ago. Much of the dam is still intact, so repairing the damaged segment should give the Seattle chapter a “good bang for the buck.” Our own Alaska chapter made contacts with an Italian NGO operating out of Moyale, the governmental center of the Liban Zone. This organization – LVIA – has asked for our help in planning and maintaining a system of solar-powered water pumps in the region. We are actively pursuing this opportunity. The SCA chapter is also moving forward with a feasibility study that will take a region-wide look at the water supply problem. Very little essential information was easily available before the January site assessment trip. Our study should provide others interested in providing assistance in the Liban Zone with the necessary information to make good planning decisions.