General description of the study area

The study area is found in Hidabo-Abote district, North Showa zone of the Oromia regional state,
which is 10km far from Ejere town and 34km, 159km far from the Zonal capital Fiche and the
metropolis Addis Ababa respectively. The project area has a geographical location of 36p X-04 45
907m and Y-10 90 896m and Z-2387m.a.s.l.

Topography

The elevation of the area ranges from 2250m-3000m, which has undulating topography, and in
some places especially in the low land of the area the topography is plain. The figure below show
the altitude of the area.

Geology of the headwork site

At the head work site the rock exposed on the surface is scoracious basalt which is massive and
not easy to dig it with auger bit or any other digging material but it is in favour of our the masonry
work, so based on the above condition the expected foundation material is scoracious basalt and it
depth doesn’t exceed 0.5 m.

Climatic Condition of the project area

Temperature

For the analysis of temperature conditions of the project catchment area, meteorological data of
Gerbe Guracha station located at 38.417E longitude, 9.817N latitude has been utilized as gathered
by NMA. As computed from the stated meteorological station data, monthly mean maximum and
mean minimum temperature of the area was found to be 26.18 c0 and 2.41 C0. This shows the mean
temperature of the site ranges in between these two limits throughout the year. Relatively high
temperatures were observed during the months of February, March, April and May. As observed
from several years’ meteorological data of the stated station, the higher mean monthly maximum
temperature was observed during the month of March where as the lowest mean minimum monthly
temperature was recorded in December. The overall pattern of mean monthly minimum and
maximum temperature of the project area can be visualized from the table below.

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Rainfall

As recorded on the aforementioned meteorological station and shown on the table below, the mean
monthly rainfall of the area ranges from 7.76mm in January to 365.85mm in July. During the rest
months of the year, the catchment area gets in between these ranges. The average annual rainfall
derived from the summation of mean monthly rainfall values indicated below becomes close to
1333mm.

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