Utilizing Bamboo Cavity as an Appropriate Technology for Shallow Groundwater Conversion

Abstract

Since the early 1970s, many farmers on the west coast of Indonesia have used groundwater to irrigate their agricultural land. Groundwater used is mainly done for rice, corn, and other secondary crops. As a result, the groundwater level in the area has experienced significant degradation and has also been followed by an increase in groundwater salinity. The government's suggestion to make artificial recharge with composter pipes or with "biopori" technology is considered difficult for farmers since they cannot afford to buy PVC pipes as their main ingredient. The challenge gave birth to our innovation to utilize local materials in the form of bamboo for artificial infiltration tools, which we call "bamboo-cavity." The three advantages of filling with "bamboo-cavity" are: (1) the ingredients are cheap and easy to obtain in the area of people's agriculture; (2) pollution-free because the material is without chemicals; and (3) easy to install because there is no need for soil drilling, where the bamboo is directly put in a hand hummer. This initial research was carried out with two objectives, namely: (1) Finding out the effect of "cavities" on the recovery of degraded groundwater; and (2) Knowing the effect of the number of inflection points on the rate of recovery of groundwater. The research was carried out by applying nine variations in the number of infiltration points, on agricultural land with topsoil characteristics that have low permeability. The results of the study provide an overview of the effectiveness of cavities as a means of enhancing, namely: (1) the effect of the number of cavities on increasing groundwater levels is very significant. The results of field observations found that the total increase in groundwater level in wells with the formation of 8 cavities reached 75%, compared to the increase in groundwater level in the control wells and the more installed cavities, the higher the increase in groundwater that occurs; (2) The test wells with the highest value of additive effectiveness are wells with a number of cavities between 56 and 64 points of infiltration, i.e., the recharge effectiveness reaches 3.74.