Kued Sum Sib and Na-on Village Water Supply Project Report

Thank you for your contribution in helping to bring sustainability to resource-poor hill tribes in Northern Thailand. Your donation of $11,500 along with others towards the $87,000 project made it possible for two neighboring villages totaling 296 families, with a population of 1,400, have clean water. Note: This is the biggest water project that WRSDP has ever done.

The project water source is 27 km from the villages and 325 meters above the village, safe from any pollutants. It took 4 months (120 days) to build this water system, owing to having to trench with a hoe and attaching pipe to trees where trenching was not possible. To make the work even slower, there was an outbreak of coronavirus where 38 villagers and 4 WRSDP staff got infected and had to get treated and quarantined. An additional 208 villagers had to be quarantined for 10 days due to Covid exposure.

Other than a technical problem of a pipe bursting (high water pressure) other factors had to do with rain, road conditions and remoteness. To complicate things even further, the manager of the WRSDP (A Rom) died of heart failure. 

Blessings

Michael Mann
ITDF Executive Director

Recent Events

Context

The village was founded more than 54 years ago. There are 246 households, 1,400 people. Almost all the people in the village are Lisu with some Tai Yai. They are farmers that make most of their income from planting rice, corn, red bean, black bean, ginger, taro root, mango and avocado. The village has been having problems with lack of land and water mostly due to village expansion, with water shortages being the biggest problem as sources are drying up. The five wells have been going dry for quite some time and are now not adequate for families to carry out everyday tasks.

The villagers have to buy drinking water from the town 17 kms away, not only for drinking but for cleaning. They spend more than 8,000 baht (US$235) per household per year to buy water. Now with the newly constructed water system they have water coming straight to their village. Villagers are saying “It likes a dream come true” and are so very happy. 

Kued Sum Sib Village (top right) and Na on Village (right). 

Construction

Transporting PVC pipes from town to camp, camp to water source

Digging the water line, connecting pipes with glue, and welding pipes with hot air gun.

Testing water system

Transporting heavy metal pipe

Connecting, welding, and installing metal pipes across the river

Installing air valve, transporting materials /supplies for break-pressure tanks construction.

Camping in the forest to be closer to the source

Construction of water filtration tanks

Finally water gets to the village

Challenges

- The PCV pipes, class 13.5, burst due to high water pressure and kept bursting every time we fix ed and tested. The maximum water pressure in the system is almost 400 lb/! We had to install three break pressure tanks along with using metal pipes in some areas.
- Because the roads were so bad and being the rainy season trucks would often get stuck.
- PVC pipe gnawed by moles

Comments from the Headman Panupong

“Today, it’s just like a dream come true. Throughout the past 54 years we had to take water from the wells. The quality of water was not good, dirty and had sediments. I remember when I was young, I had to wake up before sun rise about 4.30 AM to get water from the wells. I thought I would be the first in line, but many people were always there before me. It made me know that we have a big problem with water and it’s been like this for a long time. I don’t know how many generations of people have to face this condition.

We had to buy drinking water from town and sometimes we even had to buy water for cleaning. But now the water has reached my village, it makes me very happy and all the villagers are happy too. I would like to thank you, A. Mike, A. Joni and all the WRSDP staff who donated money, provided the expertise, and made the project a success. It wasn’t easy to do a 27 kilometers village water supply system and many people thought it would not succeed. We all got very tired, but now our tiredness is gone. You are the ones that God sent to help us. Thank you very much from my heart”.