Improving Water Security in Mon State, Myanmar

Our project “Improving Water Security in Mon State, Myanmar via Geophysical Capacity Building” aims to improve water security in rural Mon state in southeastern Myanmar. We will achieve this by enabling local engineers, students, and researchers to use cost-effective DC-Resistivity geophysical methods to locate sustainable groundwater resources. By featuring a Trainer-of-Trainers (TOT) capacity-building model and a global, multi-disciplinary consortium of government, university, and industry partners with expertise in groundwater geophysics, our project is well-equipped to sustainably alleviate water scarcity in Myanmar and improve livelihoods for the Myanmar people. Our TOT model will educate and engage locals, providing them with the experience, expertise, equipment (all of which will be donated), and data analysis software they need to do geophysical surveys to find essential groundwater sources.

Millions of people in Myanmar suffer from water shortages during the dry season. During the 2018 dry season, an estimated 24,400 villagers in Mon state suffered directly from water scarcity: an annual crisis.

Currently, a mere 69% of households have access to improved drinking water as their main source. People in Mon state are also marginalized as a result of several social issues, including acute poverty, high unemployment particularly for women, and a history of displacement and migration. These issues exacerbate poor water access.

Currently, government drillers lack adequate, cost-effective methods with which to determine the optimal locations at which to drill wells. The only guideline they consider in drilling wells is that they be located at sufficient distances from surface contamination sources, such as latrines. This results in low drilling success rates and inefficient use of valuable time, manpower, and money. Villagers rely on water donations in the form of trucks with large water tanks, but these donations typically only result in the delivery of 16 Litres per person per day of water. This is below even the WHO’s minimal threshold of 20 Litres per person per day for the bare essentials of drinking water and hygiene. Canadians in comparison use an average of 251 Litres per person per day — that’s 16 times more water. Furthermore, climate change stands to exacerbate droughts in the coming decades throughout the region, particularly through more intense El-Nino oscillations.

The time is now to get much needed water to people in Mon state.

The diagram below is a simple representation of the general hydrogeologic structure in Mon state, based on data from well logs from the Myanmar Department of Irrigation. Though government engineers we’ve spoken with generally prefer to drill into the deeper aquifer, because it tends to provide a more sustainable water supply throughout the year — as opposed to many wells dug in the shallow aquifer that dry up during the dry season. However, the location, thickness, depth, and thickness of this deeper aquifer is generally not known, with the exception of a few locations where wells have been drilled.

Fortunately, geophysics can help.

Government data suggest that the deeper aquifer is a fractured bedrock aquifer composed of slate or granite. The fractures provide a pathway through which groundwater can move within the subsurface. Because fractured rocks are generally more electrically conductive than their non-fractured counterparts, DC-resistivity geophysical surveys should be capable of identifing the location, depth, and thickness of deeper aquifers throughout Mon state — saving valuable and limited time, money, and effort for the Myanmar government.

While our goals for this project are ambitious, our project’s strong global, multi-disciplinary partnerships will allow us to achieve our vision:

• 1) Perform geophysical surveys in 20 high-priority, water -stressed Mon villages by July 2020, reducing water scarcity for an estimated 15,000 people and particularly for women and girls, who are disproportionately impacted by poor water access.
• 2) Increase well drilling success rates by 20 percentage points (from a baseline of ~60% to ~80%)
• 3) Train 30 DRD engineers (of whom 5 will be designated as Trainers-Of-Trainers for long-term impact) and 20 geology students and professors at Mawlamyine University’s Geology Department during an intensive 2-week groundwater geophysics short course.
• 4) Inspire students at Mawlamyine University to pursue careers in the geosciences
• 5) Develop a comprehensive open-source curriculum for DC-Resistivity geophysics.