Water Well in Nicaragua

Over the past months, the Agros staff and well-digging professionals have worked to drill a well for the community to use for their irrigation. Two 154-foot wells were dug in the community. The first was paid off (for a total of $3,698.82) but Agros only made a $693.07 installment on the second well. The well-diggers thought of donating a third well to help meet the goal, which was to leave two functioning wells. However, throughout the process it became apparent that the wells don’t provide enough water to set up an irrigation system due to a layer of rock that crosses through the property from 70 to 154 feet below the surface. Another factor that can affect the flow of the ground water is a large-scale irrigation used on plantain and sugar cane crops in the Rivas department that lowers the amount of ground water available.

A generator pump will now be used to help pump water from the river to holding tanks from which to irrigate. This is plan B, and we are hopeful this will have good results for the community in their irrigations needs.

While the drilling of the well did not work out as expected, there are factors that cannot be controlled that contributed to the situation—the rock layer, the demand for ground water—and are part of the risk in the work we do. That is why plan B is important and we are hopeful it will help the community reach their goals.

Attachments:

• Future_del_Manana_Summer_2007.pdf (PDF)