The drinkable groundwater beneath Lodwar can sustain a city of two million people for up to five years, experts have said.
The scientists, who have been studying the aquifers in northern and eastern Kenya, said the Turkana region has about four large underground water bodies.
However, they focused on one large aquifer below Lodwar.
Their study comes years after geologists in 2013 suggested that Turkana sits atop a giant aquifer, the size of Lake Turkana.
The team said most underground water is unusable because it is salty.
The new study was carried out by scientists affiliated to Reach, a global research programme to improve water security for the poor through science.
The study was led by Prof Daniel Olago, country director of Reach and director of the University of Nairobi's Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation.
Olago said their study covered a 400 square kilometre area.
“We noted that there were four subsystems of the groundwater. So we called these four subsystems collectively the Lodwar alluvial aquifer system.”
These four water bodies are interlinked and some water exchange happens between them.
“What we found is that this particular aquifer system has a storage capacity of about 1.3 billion cubic metres. That basically means that we can abstract about 100 million cubic metres of water per year without depleting the aquifer, ” he said.
“That would support a town of up to 2 million people and it offers a buffer against drought of two to even five years, given the way that the aquifer system is structured.”
He spoke to the media at a meeting by Reach Programme, in collaboration with the Kenya Environment and Science Journalists Association and the Kenya Editors Guild.
Reach is hosted by the Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation.
Prof Gilbert Ouma, a climate scientist at the UoN, said the Turkana aquifers are recharged by rains that fall in Western Kenya.
“We noted that this aquifer is strongly getting its replenishment from Turkwel River, which originates from Mount Elgon, as we well know. It travels almost 300 kilometres, passing through Lodwar Town to Lake Turkana,” he said.
Scientists have known northern Kenya holds huge amounts of underground water, but breakthrough came in 2013, when geologists suggested there was a 250-billion cubic metre Lotikipi aquifer.
The geologists said it could supply water in Turkana West and elsewhere for 70 years.
However, plans to extract the water were abandoned after being determined to be economically unviable due to expected salinity.
The Ministry of Water stopped exploration of the aquifer saying the power bills for desalination could amount to Sh50 million a month.
However, Turkana government last year suggested the county could still exploit the potential of groundwater resources to boost food production and meet water demand.
Governor Lomorukai Napotikan said his Administration would explore Public-Private Partnerships to invest in desalination plants across the county.
"The salinity of water in Turkana remains a challenge. We have to come together to invest in technology to help us utilise our water resources. We want to produce food and feed our people properly even when there is no rain and that is practical," he said.
“This is part of efforts by the administration to enhance crop and pasture production that will change the fortunes of residents of Turkana following years of drought, which has led to an increase in reliance on food relief.”