Pasmata Water Project – Progress report for 9/25/2011

This week went very well, of course, not as I had planned in my overly anal and naively built Gantt chart. Keeping with the theme of the past posts, let’s get started with some rigid engineer mind explosion.

Accomplished Project Tasks:

From last time (I only had this compiled in email form, so I’ll just paste it in here all nimbly-bimbly)

Prepared a survey for Pasmata to obtain basic census information along with information and opinions concerning this upcoming water project as well as a portion evaluating willingness to pay both on the initial construction front, as well as for a monthly payment – Conducting this survey went quite well. To summarize the survey process a bit better, the questions went as follows:

• Who lives in your house: education, age…etc.
• What kinds of infrastructural items to you have: electricity, water, toilet (with a way of rating their toilet on a good to bad scale for odor, cleanliness, and flies to allow for statistical coding-yep this is what my life has come to).
• An introduction stating that this project is hopefully going to be happening, but only with the contribution of $8 from each family, and $2 per month to pay for maintenance and all that’s entailed with it. Each person was informed why these rates were as they were.
• question about their feelings of the use of meters, and how they would feel having the cost of water based on quantity instead of a flat rate. We prefaced that this was likely to be requisite, Travis and I both agree that knowing how much water is being used is going to be highly important for reasons of: understanding system demand, household use (overuse?)…to name a couple. Didn’t know quite how to tell them that our goal would be to someday have the meters monitored over the internet. This explanation might have to wait until we get the pilot set up J
• A closing statement saying that you for your time, we’re going to have a community wide meeting explaining in detail what is demanded of the community (time, money, labor), set for when Travis get’s here so we can have some more firepower.

In total we had 165 surveys to do. The surveys were divvied up between the water board, President Don Chico took 75 surveys, Julia, a guy named Miguel and Sulema took the rest. I was under the impression that everyone had somewhat of an idea about what a survey was about, seeing as I showed them the activity and role of a surveyor and an interviewee J.

These surveys did go relatively well,

considering that the majority of the folks (unbenownced to me) who were going to give these surveys (the water board of Pasmata, and a few random folks that showed up to meetings) either couldn’t grasp the premise of the surveys, didn’t agree themselves with what the questions were saying and ergo entered in their own biases while presenting the questions, or simply couldn’t read and write. I decided I would go out with a few folks to see how they were giving the surveys. Sulema, the woman I worked with first had eye problems so she had me read the questions and she continually gave her own opinions to the interviewee while I tried to explain that they were supposed to listen while the interviewee talked. Sulema spent nearly one whole survey explaining to me in front of a woman interviewee that people in Pasmata are poor and what that should mean to folks doing a water project. So, not exactly the professional façade we were likely hoping for. However, nearly all 165 surveys have been conducted (albeit by a group of random people, handed the surveys and told to do the work by the water board). A positive takeaway, the people know about the project and are ready for a meeting.

Fecal coliform tests done at the new source by MINSA – This went even better than we had planned. On a whim, I was called by Reyna instructing me that I had to be at the ENECAL office in 2 minutes. I got there in 3, and waited for 1hr. I love this place. ENECAL apparently had an opening in their busy lab schedule to accommodate our complete request for water quality tests. I was driven to Pasmata, and we made the trek up to the location of the new source. Two nutrient samples were taken and one bacteriological test was taken at the source. I managed to find the perfect location for the dam, solid rock walls about 3 meters wide (see picture below). This is at 830meters, the tank is at going to be at 740 meters.

The fact that we got these tests taken before the first of October was nothing short of a miracle. We hope to have the results by Thursday, I will include these in the next blog

Walk the tube line with a local pipe guru: We decided to wait for the response from the Finca de Pasmata. We heard back yesterday, after having called the representative for the farm (Miguel), that the Finca de Pasmata owner was going to be discussing the letter Karla wrote concerning using the source above Las Piedras (right above the water fall about .9km upstream). So we should be hearing back from them by Wednesday of this upcoming week . Exactly 1 week late. Not bad.

Land owners: We have yet to get signed documents from Dona Comila, Maria, Folia. However, we did hear from Dona Maria saying that we could use her land free of charge for the tank location. She was originally demanding $150, but then she decided to donate, not sure why but we are grateful!

Somoto Rotary: Ivonne confirmed today to meet with the water board, myself, and Jessie in Somoto on Tuesday evening of next week. I will be speaking with Travis to see what is needed from the Somoto club to get the ball rolling. We will also be presenting the scope of the project with Ivonne and the Somoto club.

Alcalde y alcaldia: Karla and I had a meeting with Orlando on Monday to solicit his presence at the upcoming community meeting (during the time that Travis is here) October 9^th. We are going to try to get him to commit to the $2000 that he has promised for the domestic lines at this community meeting. Just a bit of pressure from the community J. We’ll see how this goes. He certainly isn’t going to have any money to give until the first of the year, but that should be just in time for the domestic lines, shown in the Gantt chart, as being installed in January. I will do a back flip if any of the promises he’s giving actually take place.

Champigny System not working well: I walked the Champigny system to get another successful system design in my head. The system, which was constructed in 2001, is still working pretty good, with the exception of some plugged air release valves (common to both this system and the Nueva Esperanza system). The main problem with this system was there is something plugging up and slowing down water flow in the distribution line (after the tank). This was evident both by the overfilled 16k gallon tank, and the people in the community complaining that there isn’t any water. The people of the community think the reason they don’t have water is due to an increase in demand. Their fontenero (maintainance guy) doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, and how to fix the problem, mentioning that the system needs to be expanded and a new tank installed. After looking through some if-then troubleshooting diagrams in my engineering for developing communities book, I have deduced what I already thought, that the distribution line is either too small (not the case, 2” is actually overkill if you ask me), or is blocked. Blocked is the likely culprit, and since new households have been installed rather ad hoc, I would imagine that more sediment/junk could be entering the system.

I will explain the situation to the Champigny water board when we have a meeting, one is planned for the following week to discuss how their construction teams were run, and any lessons learned. I will also be discussing this with Gregg since he likely knows the most about this project. Looking after systems like this one and making sure that everything is running properly will be a great job for the upcoming FCP rep. I will be keeping a log of work that he/she can do so that his/her time is used effectively. Should be quite a lot of fun having a hand in so many projects.

Gantt chart: Emailed to the board to show where this week’s work has put us in the grand scope of things.

New project on the horizon -- I met with a man named Don Enrique from Trapiche. He and his water board have created an impressive document both in Spanish and in English outlining an expansion proposal of their current system to meet the demands of a neighboring community of 80 households that is developing close by. The community is filled with rockstars who have been very active in expanding and up keeping their water system funded in part by ISLA (Minnesota) in 1983. The system is still running. They are of course lacking funding, but I believe this project could potentially be a great one to piggy back the hopefully successful project in Pasmata.

My main fear is that they are trying to use donor money to get in place a project that will in tern allow them to charge the development company that has bought the land (solares) for the new neighboring community named Monte Verde. The only reason the community hasn’t been built yet is the lacking water system, and from the looks of things, they have been waiting for some time. The fact that there is corruption in the air is pretty comforting these days, as it’s something I’m getting used to dealing with and assuming it’s presence.

Pending Project Tasks:

Somoto meeting-- Getting ready for this meeting. I will be discussing this with Travis who is running the show states side.

Water System Designs – The first string of designs should be done and sent out to Greg et al (I will just take photos of the pages in my calc book, and send the excel spreadsheet and CAAD drawings) by the end of next week. We are hopefully walking the line as well on Saturday, which would give exact elevations, albeit we pretty much already have them having walked the general line area 3 times (mailman calves).

Permitting – During the walk, we hope to get signed the letters that Karla has written, by the 3 finca owners. We will also be waiting with baited breath for the go ahead from the Finca of Pasmata. If there are any issues with them donating the land, this project will likely screech to a sickening halt. Be thinking of us on Wednesday!

Line location cleaned and flagged—this would be nice as well.

Thanks for reading guys, I hope you’re doing well, and I look forward to posting again next week! Things keep on keeping on!

Jeff and Jessie

Pasmata Water Project – Progress report for 9/12/2011

There were less steps forward this week than in previous weeks due to a bit of sickness on my part, and a few delays due to highway blockades and the lack of proactiveness (and apparent interest) on the part of the alcaldia. Please let me say first of all, everyone has told me that the government is corrupt, it’s a common theme in most governments, especially those in Latin America. And I would like to operate in the innocent until proven guilty prose. However, I am starting to see that the government, while not completely corrupt (they are doing something here and they’re overly busy and they are doing the best with what they can, amidst the obvious dissonance of gossip, jealousy, and keeping a jovial and serving public façade), just doesn’t produce when they say they will. I know, I should have seen this coming.

Ok on to what was accomplished of the pending project tasks:

Accomplished Project Tasks:

Water tests – I met with Karla at 8:00 and we left for the office of the alcaldia with Reyna (awkward, this happened because of our conversation on Saturday, when I told her Karla and I were meeting on Monday to get some tests set up), and went to MINSA to solicit their help to acquire water samples for the aforementioned tests (previous post). MINSA confirmed that they would be able to send a person into the field to appropriately bottle up the samples, but that they could only do total coliform, and physical chemical tests (pH, temperature), not E.coli, and the rest of the mineral/chemical tests. It’s funny, because when we talked to MINSA before, they said they were able to do the gambit of tests we needed. MINSA told us that we would have to get the tests done by ENECAL, and that the samples would need to be sent to Managua the same day the samples were taken from the source. Reyna told us that she would write up a letter and solicit the help of ENECAL, meanwhile we had made plans to meet with MINSA at 6:00AM on Wednesday to take the samples.

Reyna did in fact, to her credit, send a letter to ENECAL, however ENECAL replied by saying they didn’t have time on Wednesday to do the samples in Managua, and therefore we would have to wait for an open spot later in the week so that the samples could be picked up and delivered for processing within 24 hours. Due to blockades, we were not able to get ENECAL to confirm a time to test the samples, and therefore we have MINSA on hold until we can get a date. It doesn’t look like this is going to go quickly.

Permitting – After determining where we want the source to be, we now know that we need to have the following contracts signed:

Finca de Pasmata: Karla sent a letter soliciting their approval to pass a pipe on their land, and to use the water with a dam and sedimentation basin, one after the other, per best management practices (waiting on the turbidity results to see exactly how necessary a sedimentation basin and potential sand filter will be)

Finca de Dona Camilia: asking for 20m x 20m of land to place the tank

Finca de Dona Maria, y de Dona Fila: Asking to run the pipe through their land.

These will hopefully be delivered and signed by next week, and we should head from the finca de pasmata by next Tuesday, September 20^th per the demands of our letter.

Community Meeting (soliciting community financial input and manual labor) – We are still working to figure out a way to have an informative meeting pertaining to the projects scope of work, and desired sweat equity, and financial contribution, by the community. We are hoping to have this meeting when Travis arrives in the second week of October.

Soliciting 2 year FCP representative – Cole has told us that he is likely not able to be the next 2 year representative, which means we need to seek other avenues for soliciting volunteers.

Project Design: I was supposed to meet with Reyna tomorrow to do one final walk of the water line, since I figured she would have the experience needed to know exactly where a line should be run, but she unfortunately had to postpone to the following Tuesday. With the upcoming Independence Day holiday, and the Festival de Mais, I am thinking that not much work is going to be done in terms of exacting the design of this system based on a real pipe layout.

Report to Somoto: This report was sent out last Tuesday, and was received by Ivonne in Somoto. They are reading over the details and will be getting back to us hopefully this week.

Further Pipe Mapping: We are planning to have a group of 10-12 machete toting landscapers clear a line for the staking of the pipe layout. We have already bought the flags and paint, all we’re needing now is an exact location of the pipe.

Selecting Necessary Elements for a Successful Project: Travis and I spoke this last week about what we felt should be a required from the community for FCP support to be given. We felt that this list should be created to ensure that we stick to our gun with what we know to be true concerning crucial community contributions needed to ensure proper buyin, community pride and ownership, and ultimately a well run and maintained project. These elements were:

Initial community contribution: We had this set at $1000, or roughly $6 or 130 C$ per household

Sweat Equity: The community would have to construct the system with their own manual labor

Monthly Tariff: The community would have to provide a monthly payment, of around 1$, or 23 C$ for each household. This is crucial because this payment would help fund maintenance of the system and future system overhaul. It would also fund a worker to maintain the system. Greg told me that a maintenance operator in Champigny is paid around 300 $C per month to work 10hr/week maintaining the system. This person could be paid by simply 15 household contributions of 1$, where the rest would go into a savings account.

Maintenance worker: The aforementioned maintenance worker would have to be hired, trained, and held accountable for his work.

Water Board: A trustworthy water board would need to be elected, and hold meetings once every two weeks to discuss how the system is running, and address complaints from the community pertaining to system performance.

Meters: We are still discussing the use of water meters on each household tap, to monitor water usage, and the possibility of requiring payment by quantity of water used instead of a flat fee. Understandibly, this is a wildly unpopular idea by the current water board, since a larger household that uses more water, likely has less expendable money due having more mouths to feed.

Well maintained project account: We feel that we need to ensure that the community is using their money correctly, while instilling in them that a savings account supplied by monthly tarrifs will be the crucial element of project sustainability given necessary repairs and project upkeep.

Dignity Loan?: The extend of potentially working the monthly payments in a way that can help the community effectively pay back FCP, and thereby buying back their dignity so to speak, is one option we were considering. Plus the fact that if put back in the pocket of FCP, we would be able to continue forward with other water projects outside of Jalapa!

Others: We’re still working on this list, we feel it is very important to have these set into place well before the community meeting.

Pending Project Tasks

Water tests – I will continue to work on getting these underway with the help of Karla. Not having definitive water quality data presents a problem both from the design standpoint (number of filters or sed basin), and from a feasibility standpoint (if the water has evidence of high levels of pesticides, we may find that this source will not work). However, I am pretty confident that the coliform count will be less than what was found at Las Piedras, and that there will be little evidence of pesticides given the distance the source is from the farms upstream, offering a potential for chemical decay.

Permitting – We hope to have these all handled by the end of next week

Community Meeting (soliciting community financial input and manual labor) – We will continue to work on the content of this taller. I will be visiting Champigny to see how they ran similar workshops, and see how they delegated labor, and collected financial contributions from each household.

Soliciting 2 year FCP representative – FCP is on it! This is probably the most important aspect of this project right now.

Project Design: I will try to get the majority of the system components designed based on demand and assumed flow and turbidity, and get them sent to Gary and George.

Report to Somoto: I will email Ivonne again to see how this is proceeding.

Further Pipe Mapping: Hopefully we will be able to meet with Reyna and get the path for the tubes cleared by the end of next week.

Necessary Elements for a Successful Project: Continuing to draw up these elements. Any insight on this is greatly appreciated from the Board!

Thanks for reading guys, and thanks for an awesome Skype meeting! More from here in the next few days!

Jeff and Jessie

Pasmata Water Project - Progress Update 9/3/2011

We had another eventful week--with a few hiccups that set us back a few steps. However, with a project like this, moving through hiccups can almost always be considered steps in the right direction. Similar to past posts, I will start by summarizing our progress with project tasks outlined in the previous weeks post, then explain any progress outside of the scope of these tasks, and end with pending project tasks, to hopefully be accomplished in the upcoming week.

Moving forward with last week’s pending project tasks:

Walking and Marking exact pipe locations with the project teams: We were unable to get out and mark the exact location of the pipes. It was a bit overly ambitious to think that we could both GPS and flag piping locations in two outings. Apparently, based on a few community recommendations, the job of flagging pipe locations will take a team of 10-12 workers with machetes about a day to proceed through the dense foliage to flag piping locations. We did, however, get out and figure where the pipes could be run, and a more exact feasibility map was created (see below). Blogger isn't letting me post this photo correctly, please email me if you want this image.

As you can see, this feasibility map has both an Option A and an Option B (red and yellow respectively). This is because, after doing a complete mapping of the houses that will need water, we found that Las Piedras was not going to provide enough head to households above El Polverin (the sub barrio of Pasmata where the majority of the houses are). In fact there are houses in Pasmata, owned by local farmers at an elevation above Las Piedras, up a road which bisects the carretera. We also found that due to some permitting struggles we’d be having with local land owners (explained later), that locating the source at Las Piedras would require running pipes in locations that we would have a hard time soliciting permission for. That being the case, as seen below, we have a map of two options (actually only one option as we’ll see later), with the new source being upstream, actually above the waterfall nearly 700meters up from Las Piedras. This will offer more than enough head, and should also give us lower fecal coliform counts. There is also a constriction in the stream that looks nearly the same as Las Piedras, and would facilitate in the construction of a dam to capture the necessary water. However, searching deeper, I found out last night, that Option A is the only feasible option (while also using the least amount of total pipe, but most amount of conduction pipe). This is due to the location of the storage tank (yellow and red box on the map), the size of which will depend on the amount of water we have rights to, also explained later. The storage tank for Option B would require getting permission from finca owner, Dona Blanca, who apparently does not approve of the idea. Option A, while also providing the necessary head to upland households, would only need clarification from mysterious finca owner, “Pasmata”, where we are soliciting that they allow us to pass tubes through their land, but not placing a tank. The tank will be placed on a hill slightly Northeast of Pasmata, on the land of Dona Camilla, who we spoke with a couple days ago, and has approved of tank placement on her land.

Therefore, all we are lacking for complete permission of Option A, is permission to pass conduction lines from source through farmer Pasmata’s, land. We have written and sent this letter to Esteli, to “INAA Las Vegas” to solicite approval from farmer Pasmata, and should hear back from him in the next 2 weeks. For Dona Comilla, we will be writing up a contract for proof of land owner approval for the placement of the tank.

Remapping, and redesigning system based on more accurate and detailed set of GPS points, making sure the available head is available at community grids (Feasibility step 1) – This design is currently underway, I have been reading up on a system installed by Peace Corps in Honduras, in a thesis written by Nathan Rents. In his thesis he outlines each step needed both from a feasibility standpoint, as well as from a nuts and bolts, design, materials list, design drawing in AutoCAD standpoint. Plan to go through similar steps as Nathan to design and plan out this project. If I can do even half a good a job as Nathan, this project will be designed very well. I am also using resources from the UFC professors, and hopefully El Porvenir in the near future.

Parasite and Ecoli testing, to ensure water quality is in fact good (Feasibility step 2, but likely should be step 1). I have written up a list of water quality tests we need to prove the new source has quality within allowable health and safety standards from WHO. These are shown below (sorry, left in Spanish, but you can get the idea)

Bacteriológico

• 
  
  
  Coliformes Fecales/100ml – Si es posible, también:



• 
  
  
  E. Coli – An indicator organism of fecal coliforms that is easy to find, but expensive to test for.



• 
  
  
  Bacterias Termo tolerantes – thermo tolerant bacterias, i.e. bacterias that can exist in temperaturas above 45 C. This is likely to be what is tested for.



• 
  
  
  Coliformes Totales/100ml – Looking over all coliforms, i.e. all bacteria that have the ability to convert lactos into energy within 35 – 45 C.

Parámetros Physicales

• Temperatura – important to know the behavior of dissolved compounds




• Turbididad – Turbidity, or cloudiness, which we need to keep low to have an effective residual chlorine dose, since too much stuff in the water (natural organic matter, silts, clays, poop) react with the chlorine and deplete concentrations.

Parámetros Chemicoles

• pH – affecting the ability to chlorinate (acceptable range 6.5-8.3ish)




• Conductivida – a great way to see if there are anthropogenic influences, in the form of salts that can be evaluated with how easy electricity is passed through the water.




• Calcio Carbonate – Hardness, an aesthetic property of water which confound attempts to suds up soap.




• Nitratos – predictor of fertilizers and pesticides




• Nitritos - predictor of fertilizers and pesticides




• Amonio – predictor of low oxygen levels in water, and skunky taste smell




• Phosphorus (Fosfatos) - predictor of fertilizers and pesticide




• Iron – Hierro – aesthetic property, could lead to reddening of clothing




• Sulfates – taste




• Floridas – teeth decay (if a high enough levels, crazy huh).




• Arsénica – evidence of pesticides, and just is a nasty compound. Permissible levels in the states are below 5ppb.
  

Turning in Somoto Document, visiting Somoto Rotary – A document was completed, but not sent due to the uncertainty of the water source and required funding for this project. A new proposal is being put together now and will be sent out early next week to establish much needed contact with the Somoto Rotary.

Utilizing Facebook and Putting the Word out for a 2 yr worker – We absolutely positively need to get someone lined up for 1 to 2 years of work here. I am awaiting approval from FCP to create this site as I know some folks were a bit wary about the idea of creating a facebook account.

Soliciting Jalapa Government Involvement: Reyna has graciously given us a few project design programs designed by engineers in Managua, that will effectively serve as a check for the calculations I run with program from UFC, Goodwater, and with Nathan Rents design in his Thesis. This is great. She has also told us that the Alcaldia is willing to put forth around $2000 for piping within the community, that we will likely need to replace due to their relative ages (nearly 21 year old, from the old project in 1990).

Pending Project Tasks:

Water tests – We hope to run the aforementioned water tests early next week and have results in the next couple of weeks

Permitting – Writing up a contract to secure permitting from Dona Comilla. This will be headed by my wife, Jessie, who is a lawyer in Colorado. Sweet.

Community Meeting (soliciting community financial input and manual labor) – Planning of a full community meeting to discuss project details, desired manual labor from each household when the project is underway, and an initial and monthly payment from each household to pay for project upkeep performed by a responsible system operator. I will be meeting with the Pasmata Water Committee on Thursday to go through brainstorming the details of this workshop, which will be held at the community school. This community meeting wouldn’t take place until we have permission to run the pipe, but the farmer Pasmata.

Soliciting 2 year FCP representative – I have started a dialogue with a colleague, named Cole Sigmon, and he has expressed interest in taking the reigns of this water project, which will likely entail supervising project construction, as well as running operation, maintenance and monitoring in evaluation while the project in running its first 2 years. This conversation has been kept very informal (as we don’t know if this is even a possibility with current FCP funding), and I will be waiting the go-ahead from the FCP board before I progress with this conversation beyond the current point of hypothetical consideration.

Project Design: Continuing to work through the design process and have a design to present to the FCP board with a detailed budget.

Report to Somoto: The goal is to have this report turned in early next week.

Further Pipe Mapping: Begin organizing troops to clear a way for the hypothetical pipe route.

That’s it for now, more on how this project is progressing next week. If you have any questions, please email me at jeff.walters22@gmail.com!