Water Uses in Northern Areas

Domestic water use

Rural: The channels that bring water for irrigation are also used for domestic water supply in the rural areas. According to Muneeba et. al (1994) most villages use the same channel for irrigation and domestic use. In some villages the people go up the channel to get water for drinking since they realize that water passing through the village can be contaminated. This has a basis in fact since most of the channels are open and wastewater from homes and feces can flow into them, plus clothes and domestic utensils are also washed in these channels. However there are a few communities that have constructed separate channels for irrigation and for drinking water. In such villages, people cannot wash clothes or throw wastewater in the irrigation channels.

Where there is a scarcity of water, channel water is stored in a pit locally called gulk or gulko or chudong. Usually it is a circular, underground pit about 10 ft deep with a roof made of timber and earth. Villagers like the gulk because

• the water here is cooler than in the channels
• it reduces the turbidity in the water
• food items stored near the gulk remain cool in summer
• it provides a reserve in case of need

In fact, Muneeba et al. (1994) found that many villagers often prefer gulk water over other water. In the village of Chaprote Bala, where a piped water supply scheme is present, some people still prefer to drink gulk water in summer over the warmish tap water. Hussain and Langendijk (1994) report that in addition to preferring the cooler temperature of the pit or river water, some villagers also do not consider tap water “fresh” because it stands still in pipes. In some instances, when the distance to the communal posts was greater than to a nearby source of water such as a channel or pit, it was found that many villagers preferred to use water from the proximate sources.

Muneeba et al. (1994) also observed that in villages there were communal and private gulks. The communal gulk was observed to be less hygienic whereas the private gulk was cleaner, with a properly maintained roof and sometimes with a door and lock. Hussain and Langendijk (1994) found that the bacterial content of gulks was the highest of all available water sources in the village. They quote a study done in over a 100 villages which found the e-coli content in pit water between 230-800/100ml (the WHO standard for developing countries is less than 10 e-coli/100ml). So traditionally drinking water has spread many diseases such as typhoid, diarrhea and giardia (Hunzai, 1993). In some villages, like in Jutial, changing practices have resulted in some homes constructing cement water tanks in place of the traditional gulk.

In the Baltistan area it is reported that the use of traditional pits for drinking and cooking water is less common than in the Gilgit region. In the few villages where the water pits (called chudong) are available they are shared by the villagers, sometimes more than 20 households using one water pit. Also, in summer when water is available through other sources, the pit is less in use but in winter storing and using water from the pit is more common (van de Korput et al., 1994).

Therefore the implications of these findings are that successful water supply schemes will have the following features:

a) have convenient locations for tap connections
b) piped water will be cold, clear and continuous
c) be technically well designed and constructed schemes with good inlet chambers, well protected storage tanks and sufficient depth of pipe trenches.

Urban: In the urban centers of the Northern Areas water supply systems are based on the usage of surface waters. Groundwater usage for domestic supply is prevalent only in a few places, such as the low lying areas of Gilgit town (Khalil, 2003).

In most urban areas water delivery systems have been around since the early 1980s but there has been a problem of continuity and quantity of water supplied to the homes. Water demand depends on the socio-economic status of the population, its density, the quality of raw water available and so on (Raza, 2002).