From Montreuil to Yelimane, with the help of Vietnam

What does the town of Montreuil, district of Yelimane, in Mali, and the province of Hai Duong, in Vietnam, have in common?
Le Paddy: A program in support of the sustainable development of Yelimane.

The Yelimane district, spread over 5,800 km², has eleven rural communes, an urban commune, and ninety-four villages, for a population of about 160,000 inhabitants. In northwestern Mali, at the border with Mauritania, the region is extremely dry, its grain production is insufficient, and animal breeding is predominant. The key to its development therefore primarily entails better control of the floods of its waterways.

When the town of Montreuil suggested that the Veolia Environment Foundation take charge of the action program including the availability of expertise and financing for the drinking water service of waterless sites of the Yelimane district, the Foundation proposed a strategy with two guidelines:

• a construction program of drinking water supply infrastructures with the rehabilitation and extension of the greater Yelimane drinking water network, and the construction of an interconnected water supply system between the villages of Gory Banda and Yaguine Banda;
• a program to install a water service on four localities: Greater Yelimane, Takaba, Gory Banda and Yaguine Banda.

Coordination of the technical aspect and its follow-up were handled by Veoliaforce, the project team of the Veolia Environment Foundation. Apart from coordination in France and expertise assignments at specific moments in the development of the various projects, Veoliaforce decided to assign worksite supervision teams regularly in the field. In three years, the Veoliaforce team performed 31 missions, equivalent to 658 days of expertise and 266 days of coordination in the field.

The Eau Vive organization represented at Montreuil and at Bamako, was active alongside the two 2AEP group (Assistance to drinking water supply systems) to identify all the project accompaniment measures, from user awareness raising and organization, to communal management and responsibility. To deal with the social structuring of such a program, each structure assigned two persons to the field, in addition to general coordination.

Hydraulic activities began with the rehabilitation and extension of the water network of Yelimane, the capital of the district (project 1).

The accurate assessment of water supply needs was made by Veoliaforce volunteers with the support of the Solidarity Eau Program. After two years of study and joint discussions with the various beneficiaries of the project, the operations undertaken between 2006 and 2007 helped to rehabilitate and extend the historic water network of Yelimane dating back to 1956 and representing a distance of 6 kilometers.

In the resource itself, the main well was rehabilitated and a second well connected.
The water tower was reconditioned and the operating building extended with an additional room, to accommodate a chlorination unit. Eighty individual subscriptions were replaced with the installation of an individual meter for each. At the same time, the distribution network was extended four kilometers to the three neighboring villages (Yelimane Cebe, Dougoubara, Diadji). Finally, a total of 9019 linear meters of pipes were laid, thanks mainly to the work of the villagers. Twenty standpipes were installed, including six new ones for the three hamlets connected.

The accompaniment aspect consisted of the reorganization of the management committee, from the members making it up to the managing team, all working alongside the mayor of the commune.

Operations continued with the interconnection of the drinking water network between the villages of Gory Banda and Yaguine Banda, 15 km from Yelimane (project 2).

In order to cover the water needs of the villages, the technical partners were asked for expertise on two occasions to estimate the production capacity of the existing boreholes. These tests, financed by the association of the inhabitants of the villages culminated in a technical proposal around two boreholes, which were equipped with poorly functioning hand pumps. The proposal did not satisfy the requests for private connections made by the migrants, even though the studies immediately included the possibility of doing that subsequently, once the management and operation of the service was demonstrated for some time (at least one year). In fact, the forthcoming increase in water demand was considered with the immediate connection of a second borehole and the construction of a sufficiently large reservoir.