EWB-UW is a registered student organization operating under the oversight of professional mentors, and acts as the collegiate extension of the national non-profit organization, Engineers Without Borders. We are partnered with the NGO Wisconsin Initiative for Guatemalan Infrastructure (WIGI) and maintain project involvement with the municipal government of Joyabaj. In the past three years, we have
assessed, designed, and implemented two drinking water distribution systems in the highlands communities outlying the city of Joyabaj, Guatemala. We hope to assess a third such project this coming spring break. Our design philosophy centers around enabling our partner communities to use their resources, coupled with our design knowledge, to construct sustainable clean water sources. We also emphasise the use of water meters_____. We also conduct heath workshops____
Our first water project was in the community of Pajuya, a community of about 300 people. Before our water line was constructed in the summer of 2014, they lacked access to potable water and commonly drank contaminated runoff and spring water, as a nearby water line was not operational. Our project engineered a system to protect two springs and divert their flow to a storage tank. The distribution lines then navigated more than a thousand feet of elevation to deliver water to the communities. As a sign of our continuing investment into the sustainability of the Pajuya project, we will be returning this winter to construct three concrete break pressure tanks as a more permanent pressure management solution. Our second water project is located 7 miles east of Pajuya in the community of Azucenas, and is currently under construction. The Azucenas system will serve 125 families and an elementary school, bringing together over 12 km of pipeline once operational. The situation in Azucenas was similar to that in Pajuya; members of the community frequently contract waterborne illnesses, resulting in major health issues and poor attendance at the community school. To complicate matters, Azucenas had a semi-operational water system that served only a third of the community and functioned every other day, setting up a poor collective attitude toward water usage. Families at the top of the line would run their taps continuously, collecting water in 55 gallon containers, while those at the bottom of the line received little to no water, and had to look for alternate, polluted sources. Our system will alleviate the reliance on the old system, and will provide water to those who are currently not on that system. The Azucenas line starts where three separate springs are capped and filtered. The conduction line carries this water down the mountain to our holding tank. From there, distribution lines will deliver the water to all 126 taps, with a water meter at each tap. In order to improve system sustainability, a written agreement with the community has been made to set a usage limit of 80L of water per person per day, which meets the W.H.O. developing country health standards. The construction of the Azucenas system began in late July with the assistance of 10 EWB-UW members who traveled to Guatemala for 15 days, and full completion and operation is expected by the end of October. We believe that this project will greatly improve the standard of living in Azucenas for decades to come. We are currently performing operations and maintenance on our first completed water system, which is serving a community of nearly 300 people. We are creating a break pressure tank to combat issues with pressure buildup in the gravity fed water system and maintain our commitment to sustainability in the communities we work in after the project is completed. We are also completing construction on an implementation project that was started in late July of 2015. This system will provide a potable water system for a community of 600 people, and give them access to a reliable source of this potable water for the first time.
