Why Water Trucks Are Essential In Drought Emergencies?

Water trucks deliver potable and nonpotable water for various uses involving dust control, drinking water delivery, firefighting, and farming. Even when emergencies occur, water trucks are favourable for nearly every plausible circumstance. Majority of the people do not give a thought to these trucks’ crucial role but if they vanish, everyone would definitely notice the difference.

Water trucking for drought-affected regions has become a cyclical involvement as rainfall patterns in these regions are seen to become increasingly uncertain. Emergency water trucking is a life-saving method utilised to encircle interruptions in water delivery or access to sufficient quantities of water to satisfy survival prerequisites.

Suitability Of Emergency Water Trucking

Water trucking should be considered the last-resort alternative for emergency provision of water in drought. Several important points must be considered during the planning phase of the emergency response to assess the applicable response to it:

• We should understand how the target population generally access water during the dry season and whether there are prevailing coping mechanisms that might be supported or be reinforced.
• There can be a risk of over-grazing of wet-season grazing areas by emergency water trucks if it is concentrated on settled pastoral communities (especially around EWT distribution points).
• There is also an assurance that Emergency water trucks could provide assistance to provisional mobile communities through the availability of water to distant grazing areas in order to dissipate pressure on scarce natural resources.
• It is also essential to discern whether the yields of boreholes are adequate to meet the water needs of water trucks besides to the everyday users.

Why use Water Trucks During Drought Emergencies?

Good Water Quality

Water trucking furnishes water which is potable and attaches it to many indicators for water quality. Water quality is guaranteed in emergency water trucking through the following:

Selection of tanker filling water source 

Water points sourced for water trucking in dry regions comprise drilled boreholes, surface water runoff , and municipal water systems. The water quality of these different sources varies largely. While boreholes normally provide good quality water which could handily be chlorinated for drinking, surface water collection points generally contain water that is excessively turbid for water to be chlorinated without pre-treatment.

Water Treatment 

Water can be chlorinated to deliver a chlorine residual of 0.5 mg/L for usage purposes. This can be accomplished in various ways:

Chlorination at the water source

Chlorination is frequently conducted in the water tanker itself and the purpose of this method is that a large amount of water can be shortly and easily be cleaned by using chlorinated HTH chlorine, the water can immediately be utilised by beneficiaries upon collection.

Chlorination at the household level 

This is normally achieved through the supply of Aquatabs or the same chlorine product. This has been executed in interventions where chlorination of water at the source was not probable. But chlorination at the household level requires extra activities and resources.

Safe Water Storage

Safe water storage can be a very essential requirement at each water distribution site in order to:

• • Give storage for a quantity of water adequate to meet the population’s demands for a particular period of time
  • Prevent contamination of the water and retain water quality

Various water storage facilities can be used:

• Existing water storage facilities in settlements (masonry water tanks, tanks used for rooftop rainfall collection, etc.) should be opted for. The tanks must first be cleaned and tested for damage.
• Plastic tanks are handily transportable, durable, comfortable for potable water storage and can easily be fitted with pipe fittings at the outlet or inlet. Tanks require to be raised to allow water to be collected through a tap. Taps and pipe function needs to be rigidly attached to prevent damage to the tank.
• Bladders can be directly set up for water trucking, though local procurement is a problem. Bladders were utilised in Wajir, Kenya in 2011 as none of the water tankers possessed water pumps for the offloading of water.
• For mobile pastoralists, using water trucks is a boon for them because they are not permanent settlers; water trucks are mobile too, which caters to their needs.
  

  Proper Distribution

  The water tank has a hygienic strategy for water collection. This is best accomplished through connecting the tank to a tap stand. All storage vessels must be heightened in order to enable for gravity flow of the water to the tap stand. A challenge is presented when underground or buried tanks are used for storage. In that case, a technique must be devised like:

  • Use of a hand pump
  • A dedicated bucket or rope that is cleaned on an everyday basis
  • Separation of people or animals from the access point
  • Protective measures to curb the danger of dirt or contaminants etc from entering into the storage vessel.

Conclusion

Thus we can conclude that Water trucks are a valuable way to transport a large amount of water from place to place. Droughts can have an enormous effect on both livestock and crops in arid and semi-arid regions which, in turn, would harm the supply of food around these regions, but thanks to water trucks, people are able to handle dry seasons and also can be used whenever farmers face these difficult situations.