Rural Water - Quarter 4, 2008 - (Page 34)

of additional units to serve the entire community of 135 families. It was at this meeting in the summer of 2004 that the community delivered a challenge to IRWA. Lupe and Fred asked about the feasibility of the community helping ﬁ nance the installation of many more Depuradors. Instead, after the hearing, the Water Board posed the question, “Why don’t you just build one large one to treat all of the community’s water?” Such a possibility had frequently been the subject of discussion between Lupe and Fred, but now they had to deal with this as a community-raised alternative rather than just a pie-in-the-sky idea. The ﬁ rst issue to be dealt with was whether the hydraulic proﬁ le of the existing system would allow for the installation of a treatment unit and still function properly. Also, a suitable site would be necessary because any treatment unit would have to be located between the source of supply and the community’s water storage tank. A visit to the storage tank and an evaluation of the incoming head pressure showed that the La 34 system could accommodate a treatment plant without any major changes in the system and that there was an ideal site for such a plant adjacent to the storage tank. Now, the big issue was to design a treatment unit that could operate without electricity and could be built from local materials. Lupe and Fred left La 34 with the promise that they would try to ﬁ nd a solution to treat all of the community’s water. It was July 2004 and Fred was due to retire in a month when he received a call out of the blue from a Cornell engineering professor asking if IRWA had an engineering project for a group of students. Yes! Fred responded, and a few weeks later, he journeyed to New York to present the design challenge to six engineering students who were part of Cornell’s Engineers for a Sustainable World program. As the students researched the design standards of the 1930s relative to hydraulic ﬂocculation, the design began to unfold and Fred traveled back to Honduras to locate alternative materials for the construction. Due to local skill levels and materials, masonry construction was chosen for the plant and the student design team focused in on sizing the various plant components with a construction start projection of January 2005. La 34 committed to providing all the labor to carry the tons of construction materials nearly a half-mile up the steep mountainside to the plant site, and IRWA committed the funds for the materials and the lead construction foreman and two skilled laborers. Construction of the plant footers got underway in late December and Fred returned to La 34 in early January to oversee the construction and translate the students’ design to construction plans. In March, the Cornell students visited La 34 to ﬁ nalize design details and to assist with the construction. As the plant neared completion in June, a graduate engineering student from Cranﬁeld University in Great Britain and two interns from Cornell and Northwestern joined the project team to wrap up the ﬁ nal details, manage the plant start-up and train the local plumber to operate the plant. The plant was up and operating during the tropical storm season of 2005 and was effective in treating water up to 500 ntu and bringing it down to within the Honduras max turbidity standard of 5 ntu. Remembering the Marcala turbidity problem, IRWA initiated a Depurador program in Marcala in 2005 with another Cranﬁeld U. student intern heading up an effort to install Depuradors in homes in the Marcala area. These units proved effective in reducing the turbidity of the Chiﬂador water. The following year IRWA, in cooperation with a newly elected Mayor, launched a program to install newly designed and larger Depuradors in schools and public facilities, including the local prison. The purpose of this expanded Depurador program was both to provide an immediate improvement in the water quality, but also to introduce the feasibility of water treatment to the community. During 2006, IRWA visited the failed ﬁ ltration tanks to explore the possible of converting them into a treatment plant. A recent consulting engineering study provided to Marcala had called for the ﬁ lter plant to be removed and replaced with a $500,000 mechanical treatment plant. After study and a commitment by Cornell to assist with the design, IRWA proposed a $50,000 alternative to convert the ﬁ lter tanks into a treatment plant. After some deliberation, the municipality selected the IRWA approach and an agreement was entered into between IRWA, Marcala and ADEC, IRWA’s Honduras partner, to undertake the project. As the Cornell students began their design work in August 2007, work also began in Honduras to remove the hundreds of cubic yards of ﬁ lter media and mud from the tanks so that they could be examined and detailed measurements made to assist the designers. Shortly after, construction began on the reinforcement of the tank walls and the divider walls to deﬁ ne the ﬂocculator and sedimentation tanks. The student >>36 34 • Fourth Quarter 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Rural Water - Quarter 4, 2008

Rural Water - Quarter 4, 2008 Contents From the President Rural Water: Where are We Headed? The Future of Water in America Bank Collateral Controls in Nervous Times Bottle of Water or Billion Dollar Bully? Aqua Chocolate No Mas Why Even Small Water Systems Should Have Personnel Policy Manuals Safe Drinking Water Regulatory Update 2008 NRWA Industry Event Throwing My Loop Advertisers.com Index to Advertisers From the CEO

Rural Water - Quarter 4, 2008

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