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EMAS-WASH self-supply

Escuela Móvil de Agua y Saneamiento (EMAS)

Mobile School for Water and Sanitation

École Mobile pour l'Eau et l’assainissement

Mobile Schule für Wasser und Sanitär

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)

EMAS is not only the Spanish name of a mobile school for water and sanitation, but a large family of well drillers and rural water suppliers. The many technical applications such as the special technique of well drilling per hand, or simple hand pumps are also called EMAS. The concept for a successful implementation using independent local water suppliers is called EMAS too.

But the most important part of EMAS are the many well drillers and water suppliers in all the countries where we have trained people. Many of them also call themselves or their small company EMAS. NGOs and foundations use the name EMAS. Some use the word EMAR where the R stands for Riego or irrigation. Others use UMAS where the U stands for Unity. And many call the EMAS technoloy with an own name. In Germany, the association that has supported this approach almost from the beginning is called EMAS e.V... TADEH, a Spanish NGO that I often work with uses the name EMAS and ultimately I am EMAS myself because on my name started this school and I still train people to become water suppliers.

My name is Wolfgang Eloy Buchner,

I founded EMAS in Bolivia as Escuela Móvil de Agua y Saneamiento, what means Mobile School for Water and Sanitation. I started developing the technical components like the EMAS hand pump, solar heaters and drilling methodes in the early 1980 years in Bolivia,

The target of my live is to find water and sanitation solutions for the rural and suburban area which families can afford themself without external aid dependency. Trained local (WASH) Water Sanitation Hygiene-technicians or also called well drillers provide the service to the families.

During 44 years I had many partners. Together we trained over 1000 local water technicians and well drillers in 10 Latin American countries, 12 African countries and 2 countries in Asia. About 70 000 EMAS Wells with EMAS hand pumps are installed worldwide. May be a million of people are supplied already?

The website www.emas-international.de gives many additional information about the work of EMAS. I agree on almost everything but I have other experiences with donated wells for families where “payment is out of the question”. This would currently apply to the majority of rural families in Africa and Latin America. How is a fair distribution of limited economic resources supposed to take place? Experience has shown that very poor families cannot afford to maintain an own EMAS well. The lifespan of the pump would be short. For them, a permit to use a neighboring pump might be the better solution.

I also recommend the website www.TADEH.org. There you find all necessary information for a training and much more.

Sometimes the name "EMAS - Water for all" is used. This does not mean that EMAS provides water for everyone, but rather that there is an interesting technical solution for everyone. Be it a hand drilled well, a pump, an improved hand dug well, a rainwater catchment, a ferro cement tank, a solar water heater, a small domestic sewage treatment plant, an odorless latrine, and many more.

Where EMAS and its partners make a technology transfer, training water suppliers, a clear concept is followed to be successful. We call it the EMAS concept.

Real development is always a process that takes time. A rethinking of centuries-old traditions and habits takes time. It can take 20 or more years from the dirty water hole to the own well. In our activism to improve the world very quickly, many big mistakes are often made. Our job can only be offering sustainable and affordable solutions. I am referring to the training, equipment and support of local technicians who tackle local problems using local materials, local labor and local funding. Today we are planting these simple technologies in the soil of many countries where drinking water is not yet a given. Like any plant, it grows quite slowly at the beginning. At some point it starts to grow fast and covers the entire ground. Then everyone will have easy access to clean water, sanitation and much more. Assuming we were careful at the beginning that our plant didn’t atrophy. There are many predators.

Well drilling was always my biggest challenge because it guarantees clean water. As a technician in public water supply I knew how modern well drilling works, but in Bolivia I had no money to buy a drillig machine. So I was forced to use common material for developping the hand drilling equipment. The EMAS pump witch uses small glass balls (marbles) in the valves was already functional in 1981. In 1984 I made my first bores. I started with different rope bores, then suction drillings with PVC pipes and from 1986 the drilling by washing became the EMAS standard drilling. In 1996 I received the patent for the EMAS standard well drilling, which includes the EMAS pump. I only patented it in order to avoid that somebody forbide me teaching it. The system always was and will be free for everyone.

Double Casing - Double Filter. At a training course in Benin in 2024, EMAS and TADEH took the standard drilling method a big step forward. With the technology of an additional temporary casing, we can now determine the water quantity and quality in a half-finished well with weak aquifer. We can also increase the yield by washing out the aquifer. This makes the technology interesting in twice as many soils as before.

Trainings took place in Latin America: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Paraguay, Brazil, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

In Africa these are the countries: Eritrea, Sierra Leone, RD Congo, Mali, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Cameroon, Zambia, Tanzania, and Tunisia.

In Asia it is Sri Lanka and Georgia.