Development and protection of remote springs [Discussion paper]

Bhutan is a mountainous country in the Himalayas with a small and scattered population. Most people live in small villages with 5 to 20 houses which are sometimes clustered together, but in many villages the houses are rather scattered on the mountain slopes. Also there are many solitary houses far away from any village. Providing water to all these scattered houses by means of the conventional techniques is very expensive due to the total length of pipe required. Further more, it also puts a high workload on the households because of the extensive labour inputs required for trench digging. Fortunately, in many cases small springs can be found relatively near to these houses. Developing these small springs and tapping the water for distribution is the subject of this paper. In fact, the spring protection technique discussed here can also be used for much bigger springs supplying water to Gravity Flow Water Supply Systems.