Parched Kenya Looks to a New Water Source: Volcanoes

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Parched Kenya Looks to a New Water Source: Volcanoes

On the edge of Mt Suswa, an active volcano in southwest Kenya’s Rift Valley, Kipas Ole Masiodo checks on volcanic steam rising from cracks in the ground, careful not to let any go to waste.

As prolonged drought dries water reserves across Kenya, harvesting these fleeting wisps of water vapour near Mr Masiodo’s home has been a lifeline for his family and community.

“It is clean and safe for drinking,” the 35-year-old said. “It is not much, but it is better than travelling to distant sources to look for water.”

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Representative image, source: NASA, labeled as reuse

Using aluminum sheets and a concrete tank, his community traps the steam, which when cooled can become drinking water.

Mr Masiodo said a single steam trap is able to collect at least 200 litres of water every day – and his village now has 20 of the traps.

The community began building the structures seven years ago, with help from the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), which donated 8 million Kenyan shillings (about $8,000) to the effort.

The result is that families no longer have to spend large amounts of time searching for scarce water.

Previously, Mr Masiodo said, his wife spent several days a week travelling 10 hours a day with the family donkey to fetch water from the distant Ewaso River.

“We are able to use time [otherwise] spent fetching water … to raise money for school bursaries and build community enterprises like beekeeping,” the father of five said.

His community got the idea of turning volcanic steam into drinking water in the 1980s, from an
overseas visitor.

Although the visitor described the technology needed to harvest water, using iron sheets, it wasn’t until 2009 that villagers had the money to put the idea into use.

Now the community has harvesting units, made with aluminum sheets and concrete, as well as collecting tanks “to store water in large volumes”, Mr Masiodo said.

He said one unit costs about 200,000 Kenyan shillings (about $ 2,000) to build.

Today over a thousand families in his village are using the volcanic steam water, he added.

As droughts become more frequent in Kenya, many communities are looking for new sources of water and new ways to store it, from building new water ponds to creating sand dams in rivers to hold fresh water in wet sand.

Read full article: Reuters

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