Engineers Without Borders

Project Meeting, January 14th, 2008

February 25, 2008 at 6:01 pm | In Meeting Minutes | Comments Off

• Agenda
  • Announcement
    • Work plan review
    • Spring application available
  • Project presentation
    • Carl: El Naranjito
    • Evan: Las Mercedes
  • Discussion
  • Selection
• Carl – El Naranjito community water supply
  • Main idea
    • Take water from spring box to community
    • Route is straight forward
    • Minor question r/t which side of road to go on – which will be best for the pipe
    • High point is at road junction, but washing station is high enough to clear w/o problem
  • PRO:
    • Good community involvement with water board
      • Water board wants this
    • Easy route
    • Community is interested
    • Serve a large # of houses
      • Covers all of EN
    • Hydraulic movement is assured
      • Start high, through high spot
      • Ends a lower spot
  • CON
    • Land ownership
      • Owner is identified
      • He wants money or compensation for use of spring box and land
        • This must be put into place before TAC
    • TAC approval –> technology, sustainable?
  • Construction details
    • Tap/spigot location
      • Do we add a wash station?
      •  
    • Size of pipe vs stream flow
      • Stream disappears at some point, don’t want to redirect too much water
    • Size of pipe vs use
    • Build diversion/weir
      • Going into hillside

    
    

    • Overflow/waste @ tap
      • How to deal with it
        • Erosion
    • Need to release air
  • Project feasibility r/t time
    • Three sections
      • Pipe/ditch
        • Time intensive
          • Could be good project for community input
      • Weir
        • difficult
      • Spigot
        • Difficult
  • Questions r/t project
    • This project does not include water storage
    • Drop is ~30 meters overall
      • ~20 meters from top to high point
    • Soil around diversion is mostly rock
      • Rest is ~clay loam mixture
      • Looks to be hard – digging is tough to do
    • Soil intrusion into water – contamination
    • Storage possibilities
      • Just what is in the impoundment area
        • Collection not storage
      • Impoundment –>slope failure
    • Dry season –> source drying up
      • Community is aware of this possibility
    • Storage C-tap (?) future
      • I don’t know what this note is referring to
• Evan – Las Mercedes
  • Dirty water project: Chocolate water
  • School board (ACE) reported that water is visibly discolored during the wet season
  • December team investigated point-of-source
    • Visible turbidity in Dec (dry season)
    • Expect increased contamination r/t rainy season erosion and surface flow
  • Spring site
    • Large potential for fun-off contamination
    • Semi-covered area actually resulted in mosquito-breeding spot
    • Difficulty discerning exactly which spring box feeds school
  • Outstanding issues
    • Permission given by ACE president, teachers, MOE
    • NEED permission from entire ACE, entire community
    • Not enough water to also supply Escobal – separate solution?
      • Escobal is smaller community close-by
    • Obtain permission from Don Tom Hawk (LM Finca owner)
      • Possibility of requirement to work on roads in exchange for permission
  • Solution options
    • Short term solution
      • Point of use fix
        • Storage drums as sediment collection system
    • Long term solution
      • Clean up the source of the sediment
  • Carl’s drawing
    • Concrete box
    • Large rock walls
      • Show some water seepage
    • Questions
      • To enclose entire area
      • Enclose part of area
        • Would require lots of custom concrete work to truly seal it off
        • This might actually decrease flow of source as well
  • Construction
    • Difficult to get to
    • Hard to construct in r/t not much open space
  • What do you want to do?
    • Seal it or get as much out of the way as possible
  • Diversion of water from source around the area
  • Feasible, but need experienced cement and concrete people
    • Geology experience r/t large rocks and earthquake zone
  • Questions r/t project
    • Clothes washing in area
    • Sustainability and follow up
• Thing to consider
  • Water accessibility vs water quality
    • LM
      • School and community already has water, but poor quality
    • EN
      • project will increase accessibility to more people
  • Feasibility
    • EN will require lots of technical expertise
      • High potential for problems
• DECISION
  • Go with El Naranjito
  • Community thoughts
    • Need to decide on community use during dry season
• Things to do
  • Decide design plan
  • Start material list
  • Need permission from owner
  • Compensation??
  • Decide on stages