ABSTRACT
One of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN on water is to increase access to clean water and sanitation facilities for communities where such facilities do not exist. The failure of water projects discussed is the failure of projects on boreholes. Rural water problems are aggravated by low population densities which mean relatively few boreholes. Some causes of failure and abandonment of about 50,000 boreholes include the following: Poor construction and lack of skill and experience of maintaining the system and poor supervision, failure caused by well users, and poor technology choice. Water and sanitation committees have been set up to monitor the new boreholes that have been dug and to contact newly trained hand-pump mechanics if one breaks down. Reed, the water engineer, no longer believed that boreholes were the best option for providing water in a poor rural community. Reed could talk of some successful borehole projects in Ghana.
