Kalahari West and Kalahari East Water schemes
Ever wondered why there are so few windmills and other forms of water sourcing in the Kalahari compered to the rest of the often even less arid areas of South Africa?
The answer is in two large water pipeline schemes serving almost 3 million hectare of the Kalahari desert. Together these two schemes (“Kalahari-Wes” and “Kalahari-Oos” Schemes) consist of more than 2000km of pipelines providing fresh potable water to 573 commercial and 135 small scale farmers as far as Askham, Noenieput and Van Zylsrus.
The Kalahari-East scheme, constructed between 1989 and 1991, is the larger of the two and gets it water from the mines in the Kathu/Sishen and Postmasburg area from where it provides water to the eastern, northern and even north-western parts of the Kalahari as far as the Namibian border and the Kgalagadi National Transfrontier Park.
The Kalahari-West scheme, completed in 1984, is 436km long and gets purified water from the municipality in Upington, providing it to a total of 83 commercial farms with a total area of 707 000 hectare.
The water is pumped from Upington over a length of only about 20km to the large reservoir near the cache and gravitates to the farthest point on the pipeline from here! (I must admit that two smallish booster pumps have been installed along the way.)
An easy park and grab road side cache. Please place the container exactly how you found it. Enjoy the cache and the geocaching journey!