KU Engineers Without Borders: Ugandan Clean Water Source Project

Bubago, Uganda is a rural village in eastern Uganda without access to clean water. Currently, the 1,500+ residents of Bubago travel hours on foot to access unsafe and unsanitary groundwater sources and risk their safety in the process. The village has contacted EWB KU to build a water distribution system to provide clean and accessible water to the village in order to ensure that water is easily collectible and usable by all members of the community.

To do this, EWB KU will engineer and implement a water distribution system over several phases in the next few years. Once the phases are completed, the system will source water from a drilled borehole, pump the water to a centralized water tower, then have gravity-fed distribution to central tap points distributed in the village of Bubago. The project will support the village of Bubago. Phase 1 is the focus of the 2023-2024 school year and current fundraising efforts.

Phase 1 of the project is the implementation of the borehole, pump, and connection of pump power. Since the pump and other components are dependent on measurements from the drilled borehole, Phase 1 is split into Phases 1a and 1b.

Phase 1a will be completed remotely in December 2023, and will focus on drilling the borehole and taking measurements to guide pump selection. Phase 1b will occur in March of 2023 and will focus on implementing the submersible pump and integrating a small tank near the functioning borehole to be used as a temporary solution.  The total budget for Phase 1, which includes both the remote implementations and traveling implementations of Phases 1a and 1b, is over $30,000, with large parts of this being fundraised.