National Hydrological Service Addresses Toledo Water Scarcity

Residents of Toledo have been on the receiving end of several droughts and have struggled with adequate access to water for years. The National Hydrological Service is aiming to address these issues with the implementation of technology that will be able to locate groundwater reserves. Tennielle Hendy, Principal Hydrologist at the N.H.S. gave us more details on the situation.

 

Tennielle Hendy, Principal Hydrologist, National Hydrological Service

“The Toledo district experiences the highest rainfall, so the common assumption is that if you are getting a lot of water, you shouldn’t have water issues. Contrary, that is not the case. Um, just as though we have hills and valleys above the surface, we have hills and valleys below the surface. But if we don’t know where those hills and valleys are, we drill for wells. We either don’t find water at all, or we maybe find only twenty gallons per minute, which is not sufficient for one household, let alone two hundred people in a, in a village or a community. So that’s the crux of the matter in terms of the water scarcity we want to explore. It’s costly to explore but if we don’t find water, what do we do? We have to just try to find funds to do more, but we don’t want to be in a state of reactivity. We want to be proactive and so through the IDB, we are learning to use geo resistivity. And this type of technology allows us to put electrodes into the ground, and it allows us to see deep into the aquifer. Now, I must say, it cannot quantify, because we often see these new technologies and fill out, Oh, it’s going to tell us how much water is there. No, it’s just going to tell us whether there is presence of water there. So you need to physically do the investigations, which are very capital intensive. And so that’s one of the challenges that we face in exploring groundwater resources in the country.”