Sunday 15 December 2013

Don't give up your day job



9-15 December 2013
I have to admit that I needed a break from blogging for the week starting 2nd December as the Mt Ramelau trip wore out the word-smithing part of me.

The week of 9th December saw me heading off to the Bonbonaro District yet again for more surveying of a particularly large existing water supply system.  The system is spring fed near the hamlet of Tapo (bottom left of picture below) and the water is distributed to many other hamlets up to 15 kms away.  It appears that there is insufficient water reaching some of the tanks and tap stands.  To address this, there is the possibility of connecting another spring into the system at the northern near the hamlet Asobea but power maybe an issue for new connection.

(The green stars denotes elevation measured, approximately 15 kms covered)

Preliminary investigations indicated that insufficient water is entering the main water intake as well as some rather large leaks.  The system should be harvesting about the equivalent of the annual average volume used in an Australian house per day (about 500,000 Litres). 
There is no measurement of the water entering the system nor are any other taps metered.  As such, people have unrestricted access to any volume of water they can carry however, this can be seen as water demand management measure of sorts.  There are some bright sparks who have illegally tapped into the water mains so they access the water in their house.  When this happens the volume of water demand increases again.  

People are fined for their illegal connections just like in Australia, although the penalties are very different; US$100 and/or a cow/several goats/many chickens….  Given the going rate for a cow ranges from US$750-$900, that is a pretty steep fine for average wage of less than US$1 a day and a cow would feed a family for about two weeks.

<Warning: heavy water-related planning issues ahead>

So let’s jump ahead 30 years for TL; the government’s long term goal is to bring the people’s standard of living up to middle class level.  That would mean many of the social and health issues currently plaguing the country would largely be eliminated (issues include poor health, high infant mortality…).  A consequence of this aspiration for water supplies is the demand will increase from 60 L/person/day (~22,000 L/person/year) to say up to 300 L/person/day (~110,000 L/person/year), which is a typical water supply planning figure in Australia, however, it may go as high as 600 L/person/day.  Throw in the annual population growth rate of 3%/year and the average number of people is 7.8 per household, this equates to water supply crisis long before 2043.

Back to the present, the real question then would be, shouldn’t water supplies be designed with this likely future in mind?  In my humble opinion, yes, there are many easy and not so easy measures that can be implemented to manage water demand in TL, ask any Australian who has had their water supply restricted recently know many simple actions that can reduce their demand for example, shorter showers, not watering the garden (poor roses), water efficient appliances.  But these sorts of measures cannot apply here as they do not have any of the mod-cons.

More importantly, shouldn’t the design of the water systems consider the possibility of water demand multiplying by 5-10 times from the current demand level?  The current practice in TL is to lay small diameter black plastic poly pipe or 75-100mm diameter galvanised steel pipe.  If the demand increased another run of the pipe is laid.  So when does it become cheaper to just lay a large diameter pipe (greater than 300 mm) at the start of construction instead of many small diameter pipes when demand increases incrementally?  

From what I understand, this is the next step and would be largely funded by the community in some way with minimal government support.   I think no one really has thought about this as they are only interested in getting water to the community at only 60 L/person/day to meet the water-related Millennium Development Goals as a way to bite off only what can be chewed comfortably.

<Back to less challenging concepts>

There is talk the wet season has started, the rain in Bonbonaro reliably started falling at 2:00pm each day we were surveying.  So I have finally found a use for the 1.5 kg bag of rice I have at home.  One of the surveying units got water damaged but I think I should be able fix it by burying the GPS unit in the bag of rice.  Apparently it works well for mobile phones dropped in the toilet too (remove phone from toilet first).


(the survey crew including goat herder to prevent animals knocking over equipment, yours truly, part of the view from first day’s base station location)

On a more personal level, I got my only pair of shoes wet on the first day, I plain forgot to pack extra shoes.  So I called upon a friend who happens to be living at the hotel (Toko Risky) to see if he had some shoes that fit.  In the end I borrowed his steel caps, they were a little tight but they sufficed until my achilles were being shredded.  There was no first aid kit in the car and only limited supplies available about 60 minutes’ drive away.  I had to improvise with gaffer tape, it worked a treat….


(one of the many leaks identified, whose machete did this?, gaffer tape repair of my achilles)

Was the surveying a success? Not yet, we will need to return to Bonbonaro in the new year to finish off the survey.  Maybe in time, my counterpart(s) will be able to complete the survey on their own, which is the sole purpose of my being here.

The night life of Maliana where I was staying consisted of going out for dinner at one of the few eateries in town.  To work off eating dinner one night, an international chess championships was held at Tennant’s (NZ) and Yo’s (Japan) apartment.  Needless to say I continued Australia’s ongoing losing streak at international chess, being defeated by both guys.  All of the chess pieces were improvised; it was a nice touch with the knight pieces coming from a particularly tasteful coffee table and the rooks being the large saucepans...


(not a lot of road left to drive on, base station rain protection including a sauce pan lid, the chess championships)

So I will be back down in Maliana next week for survey of another system with other Timorese counterparts, I hope we have a little more success than this adventure.

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