Effectiveness of public rural waterpoints in Bangladesh with special reference to arsenic mitigation

Ravenscroft, Peter; Kabir, Ahammadul; Hakim, Syed Adnan Ibn; Ibrahim, AA; Ghosh, S.K.; Rahman, Saifur; Akhter, Firoza; Sattar, Abdus

doi:10.2166/washdev.2014.038

Cited by 43 publications

(68 citation statements)

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“…Some of the exceptions turned out to be wells <90 m deep, an installation problem reported elsewhere in Bangladesh (Ravenscroft et al, 2014). Other intermediate or deep wells inventoried in Araihazar may be shallower than reported but this did not increase their As content.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Other intermediate or deep wells inventoried in Araihazar may be shallower than reported but this did not increase their As content. Low As concentrations have been widely reported for deeper aquifers of Bangladesh, but there are regional exceptions elsewhere in the country (Hossain et al, 2012; Ravenscroft et al, 2014). Municipal pumping from the deep aquifer for the city of Dhaka has created a vast cone of depression that extends to Araihazar (Hoque et al, 2007) but the resulting downward flow has evidently not resulted in a widespread increase in As concentrations in deep aquifers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thirty other deep wells installed between 2004 and 2013 were selected randomly among the remaining 765 (i.e. 915 minus 150) wells installed in Araihazar by the government’s Department of Public Health Engineering, typically in response to a local contribution of approximately 10% to the cost of installing a hand-pumped deep well (Ravenscroft et al, 2014). In addition, the accessibility of the two groups of 30 deep wells was compared qualitatively on a three-level scale ranging from low (isolated area inaccessible to non-household members), to medium (limited access provided to neighboring households), and high (public location accessible to any villager).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Deep tubewells defined as >150 m deep by the government’s Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) have become the mainstay of efforts to reduce exposure by providing public water points that are low in As (Johnston et al, 2014; Ravenscroft et al, 2014). One reason is that deep tubewells can supply drinking water that generally is of acceptable chemical and microbial quality for many years (van Geen et al, 2003; Howard et al, 2006; van Geen et al, 2007; DPHE/JICA, 2009; McArthur et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another reason for the popularity of deep wells is that although their cost of ~$850 (Ravenscroft et al, 2014) is beyond the reach of most individual households in Bangladesh, they require little maintenance compared to the pond-sand filters and hand-dug wells that were initially given precedence in As-affected areas under the government’s arsenic-mitigation policy (Johnston et al, 2014). These factors help explain why a growing share of government and donor funding has been used to install deep wells, almost 200,000 as of 2007 and many more since (DPHE/JICA, 2009; Ravenscroft et al, 2014). The present contribution was motivated by the fact that few studies have evaluated the extent to which this massive intervention has had the intended impact of increasing access to safe drinking water.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Inequitable allocation of deep community wells for reducing arsenic exposure in Bangladesh

Geen

Ahmed

et al. 2015

Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development

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Community wells that extend deeper than most private wells are crucial for reducing exposure to groundwater arsenic (As) in rural Bangladesh. This study evaluates the impact on access to safe drinking water of 915 such intermediate (90–150 m) and deep (>150 m) wells across a 180 km2 area where a total of 48,790 tubewells were tested with field kits in 2012–13. Half the shallow private wells meet the Bangladesh standard of 50 µg/L for As in drinking water, whereas 92% of the intermediate and deep wells meet the more restrictive World Health Organization guideline for As in drinking water of 10 µg/L. As a proxy for water access, distance calculations show that 29% of shallow wells with >50 µg/L As are located within walking distance (100 m) of at least one of the 915 intermediate or deep wells. Similar calculations for a hypothetical more even distribution of deep wells show that 74% of shallow wells with >50 µg/L As could have been located within 100 m of the same number deep wells. These observations and well-usage data suggest that community wells in Araihazar, and probably elsewhere in Bangladesh, were not optimally allocated by the government because of elite capture.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Inequitable allocation of deep community wells for reducing arsenic exposure in Bangladesh

Geen

Ahmed

et al. 2015

Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development

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Recharge of low‐arsenic aquifers tapped by community wells in Araihazar, Bangladesh, inferred from environmental isotopes

Mihajlov

Stute

Schlosser

et al. 2016

Water Resources Research

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More than 100,000 community wells have been installed in the 150–300 m depth range throughout Bangladesh over the past decade to provide low-arsenic drinking water (<10 μg/L As), but little is known about how aquifers tapped by these wells are recharged. Within a 25 km2 area of Bangladesh east of Dhaka, groundwater from 65 low-As wells in the 35–240 m depth range was sampled for tritium (3H), oxygen and hydrogen isotopes of water (18O/16O and 2H/1H), carbon isotope ratios in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC, 14C/12C and 13C/12C), noble gases, and a suite of dissolved constituents, including major cations, anions, and trace elements. At shallow depths (<90 m), 24 out of 42 wells contain detectable 3H of up to 6 TU, indicating the presence of groundwater recharged within 60 years. Radiocarbon (14C) ages in DIC range from modern to 10 kyr. In the 90–240 m depth range, however, only 5 wells shallower than 150 m contain detectable 3H (<0.3 TU) and 14C ages of DIC cluster around 10 kyr. The radiogenic helium (4He) content in groundwater increases linearly across the entire range of 14C ages at a rate of 2.5×10−12 ccSTP 4He g−1 yr−1. Within the samples from depths >90 m, systematic relationships between 18O/16O, 2H/1H, 13C/12C and 14C/12C, and variations in noble gas temperatures, suggest that changes in monsoon intensity and vegetation cover occurred at the onset of the Holocene, when the sampled water was recharged. Thus, the deeper low-As aquifers remain relatively isolated from the shallow, high-As aquifer.

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Identifying multiple deep aquifers in the Bengal Basin: Implications for resource management

Ravenscroft¹,

McArthur

Rahman³

2018

Hydrological Processes

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In the Bengal Basin of Bangladesh and West Bengal (India), where arsenic (As) and salinity adversely affect groundwater in shallow aquifers (<150 m deep), consumers increasingly turn to "the deep aquifer" as a source of low-As and low-salinity water.We show that "the deep aquifer," which has traditionally been regarded as a single entity, can be divided into at least eight deep aquifer units each with distinctive chemical, isotopic, hydraulic, and piezometric characteristics. Except in the rapidly subsiding Sylhet Basin, the deep aquifers are largely As-safe (<50 μg/L and mostly <10 μg/L) but differ in terms of iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), salinity, stable isotopic composition, groundwater age, and in their piezometric response to pumping. We use isotopic data to identify recharge from five periods, of which two are quantitatively dominant: (a) from the Last Glacial Maximum, isotopically heavy water (δ 18 O >−3.5‰) with low As, Cl, and Fe concentrations occupies hydraulically trapped positions in the South-Central, Southeast, Southwest, and Madhupur aquifer units and (b) terminal Pleistocene to Early Holocene recharge of isotopically lighter water (δ 18 O <−3.5‰) that has high Fe and slightly elevated Cl concentrations and was recharged along palaeochannels that facilitated deep circulation up to the mid-Holocene. Piezometric responses to development change in style towards the coast. In the north, water levels at all depths tend to be coincident and transition through a seasonally divergent pattern to become parallel in the south with a near constant downward gradient. The delineation of the deep aquifer units provides a practical framework for the assessment and management of groundwater resources for water supply.

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Effectiveness of public rural waterpoints in Bangladesh with special reference to arsenic mitigation

Cited by 43 publications

References 0 publications

Inequitable allocation of deep community wells for reducing arsenic exposure in Bangladesh

Inequitable allocation of deep community wells for reducing arsenic exposure in Bangladesh

Recharge of low‐arsenic aquifers tapped by community wells in Araihazar, Bangladesh, inferred from environmental isotopes

Identifying multiple deep aquifers in the Bengal Basin: Implications for resource management

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