GS1247 VPA 75 Lango Safe Water Project

Audit Analysis

The Lango Safe Water Project is a long-running Gold Standard water-pumping efficiency project in Uganda with a confirmed additionality test and no reversal events, but it is burdened by an unusually high volume of material findings, 22 corrective actions, and ten cross-document contradictions that significantly undermine confidence in the underlying data. The leakage treatment is internally inconsistent (0% deduction in the verification report versus 5% in the PDD, with conflicting justifications), and the fNRB calculation was flagged for using an incorrect tool version. Overall, the project's design logic is sound but the data quality and documentation consistency are well below the level expected for a mature, multi-year project.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Ten cross-document contradictions identified, including a 13.6× discrepancy in claimed ER between the PDD (4,403) and the monitoring report (60,139), and conflicting leakage treatments (0% vs 5% deduction with opposing justifications).
• ⚠22 corrective actions required, including recalculation of the fNRB using the correct Tool 30 version, correction of non-functional day counts for multiple boreholes, and provision of missing GPS coordinates — indicating systemic data-quality weaknesses.
• ⚠Leakage deduction of 0% in the verification report contradicts the 5% deduction in the PDD, and the justification shifts between 'quantified' and 'deemed negligible' across documents, leaving the true leakage treatment unclear.
• ⚠Grievance mechanism books were being used as guest books by water guardians, indicating the safeguard was not functioning as intended at the community level.

Credit Vintages