History of water supply: a comparison between the North and the South

As most of you know, I always have been equally interested in rocks and water. In this post I would like to show an interesting comparison between water supply techniques of the North (historical aspects) and the South (present day rural areas). In Europe most old castles have dug wells of several tens of meters in depth. The oldest running fountains in European cities date from the 14-15th century. Mountainous settlements were supplied by springs or short aqueducts. But were did the water in flat rural areas came from? The origin of this question is a project on arsenic rich springs I had in the eastern Carpathians, Romania with a colleague from Cluj, during which I realized that still in 2005, the water supply of most farms in Romania was through picturesque sweep wells (dug wells with a genius balancing system, French: puits à balancier, German: Schwengelbrunnen; see also: short film on you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlD48eFXI_M.

Another personal experience (dating also back to 2005) was in Senegal, where in the urban agriculture area of Dakar, either simple shallow hand dug wells or deeper hand dug stonewall wells were also still in use for irrigation (in poor areas also for domestic needs).

The new thing for me was, that apparently up to 1900 also in Switzerland, in flat rural areas and even in some towns, hand dug wells with bucket winders or hand pumps were very common. But most of them, in the meanwhile have been filled up and covered.

In Switzerland, these witnesses of a type of water supply that has served mankind since Neolithic times are more and more found during constructions of new houses and are nowadays carefully preserved by the archeological service.

In the South, in rural areas, this simple technique to supply water is still very important and there are many manuals published by NGOs engaged in development, how to dig a well avoiding risks (e.g. http://www.clean-water-for-laymen.com/hand-dug-wells.html, http://www.wateraid.org/uk/~/media/Publications/Hand-dug-wells.pdf) and in some northern countries with large rural areas, such as Canada, there are even new manuals how to construct hand dug wells (http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/environment/facts/06-117.htm, http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wsd/plan_protect_sustain/groundwater/gw_regulation/dug_wells_best_management-2013.pdf) With water prices climbing and climate change in the North, in the presence of shallow groundwater, it may become interesting to install a so-called driven well with a hand (pitcher) pump on top (German : Schlagbrunnen, fr. puits foncé) to irrigate gardens ( http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/mcdougall128.html )

See also: http://akvopedia.org/wiki/Hand_auger_-_driven_wells.