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!

Pasmata Water Project - Progress Update 8/27/2011

We made some great progress over the past six days. Of the aforementioned goals, we accomplished, or at least started hacking away at them in the following ways, and some:

HERE THEY ARE:

Meeting with Somoto Rotary Club: This one is kind of a biggie, since Travis and François have been in contact with Local Rotary folks in Boulder and Denver, and are waiting to hear from local Nicaraguan Rotarians, and as was mentioned earlier, are interested in donating as a group if all ducks are in a row, and communication exists as to what the full details of the project entails. We made some great steps with this, however, after having called Ivonne in Somoto, who sharply told us that we needed to provide a report to her until Karla and I could have any face time. Loved hearing the conversation, Karla shortly after commented that Ivonne was dura, i.e. a hard lady. But this hardness is warranted, and requires us to do work that we needed to do anyway. The details put in the report thus far are shown below, the report is nearly completed and includes description of the project history and need (Karla’s part), with a project budget, donor needs, water quality tests, and a simple map outlining the tentative pipe sizes and routings.

Preliminary design of system and associated budget for an understanding of donor needs: After spending a few days looking over the Nueva Esperanza water project designs, and reading up on gravity fed water systems from a variety of sources, I came up with some preliminary designs based on the topographic mapping we did last week. I drew hydraulic grade lines for each pipe size estimate (2” for the conduction line and 1.5” (PVC) for the distribution line, while the main vanes within the town will be 1” and 0.5” PVC or hosing, depending on the house location. From this point it was possible to estimate major and minor head losses (where major head loss by friction was the main player in head loss), and based on GPS mapping, was possible to estimate the number of 6m PVC pipe was needed for each section, and based on hypothetical distribution tank and rock/sand filter placement. I also used some pretty basic sketches of the dimensions of the constriction at the Piedra’s source, which would utilize some of the gigantic boulders as a foundation, and the constriction as a damn with concrete and rebar (Travis has a great sketch up of this that his wife Laura drew. Mine was just drawn in my field book when I took some rough measurements during my first visit of the source. I am going to have to visit this place a few more times before I can feel confident with this design, and need to talk with some geotec folks about using rocks for foundation elements with drilled rebar as well). I don’t know much about dam design, so going through some documents about diversion, and dam construction methods will be highly beneficial to this project. Anyone who has seen documentation on this type of thing, please send them my way!

Water demands by the community were estimated (surveys weren’t done because we figured they would give inaccurate values anyway, and past experience and empirical evidence from the World Health Organization should and would trump anything we found by asking community members how much water they use (do we in the States even know how many liters of water we use per day without looking at the water bill?)) as 50L/person/Day, assuming a quasi exponential increase in population (good for populations less than 2000 people (Milhecic 2009)), and a project life of 25 years, yielding around 1000 folks. Sizing the tank was interesting, since based on current flows, there is no need for storage, however, in most cases to keep flow uniform, and to protect from any freak water outages, a conservative tank size of 1/4 the daily max usage (in cubic meters) over a 12hr period, was used to calculate hypothetical tank dimensions (around 3.5m x 3.5m x 3 m, which if you do the math is around 37,000 liters, around twice as large as the Nueva Esperanza tank, which makes sense seeing as their community is around half the size of Pasmata. The difficulty, however, is how much water should we assume it coming from the source, since there is no need to use the capacity of the source (which is 4x more than what was predicted as the source flow in calculations), I am thinking it would be cool to have a regulator valve at the source that a person could change based on flow in and desired flow out, if demands are higher than predicted, given that there is capacity to do so….email me if you want exact figures on this.

Pipes, valves, glue, cement, the works, was given to me in a spreadsheet from Reyna last week (that has been the extent of the alcaldia’s involvement, hopefully we’ll have more in the weeks to come), and concrete and rebar quantities and prices were found using ratios for impermeable concrete of 6:3:2 Aggregate, Sand, Cement, used in documentation, where the rebar costs were found from a local hardware store, given as 1300 C./ (about $65) per (8) 6m bars, and assuming a spacing of 6” O.C. in most cases. From these quantities, it was possible to make up a materials costs spreadsheet, which put us around $9,000 for total project costs, where Travis and I are thinking it would be better to estimate even more conservatively given the possibility of not having enough wood for forming, not having the proper tools, and having to compensate somewhat for manual labor, which Pasmata rep, Karla, has ensured me will be free of cost…but who knows.

The trip to Nueva Esperanza showed me in fact that the crux with this project will be grabbing monthly fees from folks hooked up to the water, as even $0.50/month has been hard to get from Nueva Esperanza folks (to pay for parts and a person who is in charge of checking the system $20/day). They have also mentioned that for any new household to be added to the system, a person must pay 1000 C./ ($50) for the rights to tap the line. This is good to know, seeing as Travis and I are still debating how we should charge folks based on water usage and new household connection.

Conduct the needed water tests to feel sure that this source is going to be an improvement: After reading through the 2004 WHO water guidelines (pretty basic I know, but it was in the FCP office here in Jalapa J) there was a mention that the presence of pesticides could be estimated by looking at nitrogen and arsenic levels (among mercury and other heavy metals), but mostly just nitrates and nitrites. So we actually had these tests already done for las piedras, which showed very low levels of nitrites and nitrates, fare below the permissible level. I would contend that this is good enough evidence that pesticides from up stream tobacco farms, is enough.

What we are lacking now is evidence of real pathogenic bacteria indicators, E. Coli and thermo tolerant bacteria (since in tropical areas, total coliforms do not show much due to the prevalence of natural coliforms in these types of environments), so I am pushing to have these tests done either by MINSA or some affiliate in Managua. The same goes for finding the presence of Giardia Lambia and Cryptosporidium . Old FCP project contact Greg and I were in contact early this week and he gave me some great references for labs in Managua based on contacts his wife has made over the past 6 years. He’s a rockstar too…I’m surrounded by rockstars.

Permission from Farmers, and source protection solicitation: Karla and I (mostly Karla) have put together a letter requesting 1 manzana (10,000 square baras ~about 0.9 hectares) of land around the water source to protect from animal fecal mater introduction by grazing (serious problem now, although only contributing to 14 fecal coliforms/100ml, which does show that there is some shit in the water).

Jalapa Government Design Collaboration: I had a great conversation with Karla. Travis and I agree that having governmental participation, albeit not what the town of Pasmata would prefer, needs to take place to forge somewhat amicable community and governmental relationships, even if they hardly exists, i.e. making the government feel good about what they “did”, facilitating them to take a bit more pride in the Pasmata project.

Topographic mapping: The only topographic mapping that took place this week was to see the location of break pressure tanks and air release valves for the Nueva Esperanza system (an FCP project). Their system is 5km long, and a heck of a hike (nearly 2000 feet elevation gain). This system appeared to be working well, due to good maintenance crews, who were beginning to become disgruntled by too low of pay (FYI, this could become a problem). Two air release valves were not functioning anymore, and many valves were not functioning properly, and just spitting out water.

Water Committee: We met on Thursday with the project committee in Pasmata, and had a very rich conversation (2hrs!) about how we should proceed with the project. On Tuesday we plan to go out with a piping expert to mark with flags where the pipe will likely run, and grab more detailed GPS points to facilitate a second calculation of a Hydraulic Grade Line. Neat stuff, they are all super dialed and excited to get this project underway.

Reaching Out to Find Project Contacts: I contacted El Porvenir’s president Rob Bell and got in touch with an in country contact and am waiting to hear back from him. I feel they will be a great resource for us with this project, as they have done so many similar projects. As stated in the previous post, I have contacted University of Florida’s development engineering guru, James Mihelcic and he gave me a pretty detailed spreadsheet that outlines how a project can be assessed for feasibility, designed, and monitored to insure sustainability. Getting through this 10meg monster is taking some time, but bearing fruitful conversations with Karla about cultural, economic, and political entities that are in the backdrop of this country’s present state. Joseph Ryan, a CU chemistry professor has also given his two cents on how we might test for pesticides. He basically just said that he didn’t know, but in the world of academia, that’s pretty refreshing to hear. I hope he can continue to be a resource.

PENDING PROJECT TASKS:

• Walking and Marking exact pipe locations with the project teams on Tuesday

• 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)

• Parasite and Ecoli testing, to ensure water quality is in fact good (Feasibility step 2, but likely should be step 1)

• Turning in Somoto Document, visiting Somoto Rotary – We hope to have a document to Somoto Rotary by Monday, and to visit them later next week to talk face to face.

• 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. Even if the project is completed by Februrary 2012, there will need to be someone here to run operations, maintenance and evaluations to tweak the system where it needs tweaking, and set the stage for 25 years of system life. I suggest we start a facebook page, with pictures, etc. just to put the word out, and to get people excited. Within the EDC department we have a lot of willing participants I am sure, and I am considering asking friend and collegue, Cole Sigmon, if he is interested, he’s an absolute animal when it come to getting work done right in the field. He has some project management experience in Latin American Countries and will be visiting Jalapa in October on an assignment with Water For People’s World Water Core. Please tell me your thoughts

• Soliciting Jalapa Government Involvement: I am going to be sending an email to the acaldia to ensure that we can get some of their support in acquiring necessary information about materials purchasing, and asking their advice about our design. Reyna was unable to meet last Saturday and is up to her ears in 9 projects around Jalapa, so I am hesitant about asking for more than 1hr a week from them, however, as I said earlier, having some involvement from the alcaldia, even if it’s not financial input, would pay dividends for the relationship with Pasmata and the local government.

ONE LAST THING:

Tentative Project Date!: Ok this is big, but from what it looks like, the construction for this project will hopefully start in Late November and go through January, due to wetter soil conditions, and faster excavation, as the required tube depth is 1m in some parts of the line due to tractor traffic. This means we will need to keep moving forward on acquiring exactly what is needed in terms of labor teams, finca goaheads, parts and materials, in the next two months. However, as we know, things could take place that might delay progress to 6 months later. But we will remain optimistic!

FCP and whoever else, please feel free to share your thoughts with me at jeff.walters22@gmail.com!

Have a wonderful day and we’ll keep trucking away on this project! Thanks!

Pasmata Water Project - Progress Update 8/20/2011

8/8-8/20, 2011

Settling into Jalapa: My wife Jessie and I showed up in Costa Rica around 2:00pm on August 8th. After some communication and logistical difficulties at the Costa Rica airport, we managed to be put on the right bus from the airport to a specific barrio in San Jose, where we found our Hostel right quick. The place was nice, and we stayed there until our bus trip on the Tica bus to Managua, one of the more dark feeling cities I have ever visited. No skyscrapers (none that I could see at least), just a ubiquitous gloom that seemed to cling to everything and everyone. We took the bus that morning, an uncomfortable yet hilarious ride to Jalapa, about a 6 hour trip. We stayed that night at El Pantano, a farm like feel in a rustically comfortable room. On a whim we met Karla, sans internet, as if by some sort of devine influence, and hit the ground running. That woman gets people moving, and gets things accomplished, like a newly divorced Wall Street fat cat, and does it with a grace and light that I have seen in only a few people in my life. We found a hotel (Hotel Jonathan) to stay at for a few days while we looked for a place to rent. We were blessed quickly with a place per Karla’s probing, and are now staying in a partitioned room of the daughter in law and two granddaughters of Dona Norita (Nora). After building a few shelves, placing sheets to act as a ceiling over the exposed tin roof, and getting some bedding (oh and abed), the place feels like home, and Jessie and I now have a headquarters base to get some work done!

Project Goals: To date the project goals while I am here in Jalapa for these 4 months (August 9th – December 10th 2011) are specifically to:

• Validate a new water source by running bacteriological, chemical, and parasite testing, while also performing a topographical survey to ascertain adequate hydraulic pressures from head at future domestic tap stands. The new source will be upstream from a unprotected source currently used, which has been shown to have high fecal coliform counts. During this

time…

• Run the gambit of permitting and water use law understanding for the new source (we’ll call it Las Piedras after the name given to the source of Las Piedras del Indio) with farm land owners, where piping will be passed, and clarification of community and Jalapan government buy in.

• Approve the water source based on permitting and water quality

• Use given turbidity, flow, bacteriological, chemical, parasite test data to design any needed sedimentation basins, sand filters, chlorine dosing along with needed pressure release, cleanout valves and other miscellaneous piping and equipment. Using these designs, it will be possible to ascertain the hours of labor and material costs.

• Continue to develop and hone in on a good water committee that we can train (we already have a group of about 5 committed folks, led by the rock star leader, Karla Pozo), along with finding and training a “circuit rider”, a person that will maintain the system: gather monthly tariffs, fix problems..etc. , and work with us and the Automated Metering Infrastructure (in the progress of being developed), radios to communicate real time water use over the internet to be monitored by Travis and I and possibly presented to associated donors..etc.

• Create a draft of an Operations, Monitoring and Evaluation plan for use when the project is completed (very important)

• Develop a transparent plan for construction, outlining a work schedule and management tool that the person coming to fill my place in November (1 month overlap at the minimum), will be able to use and build on.

• Other………

Thus Far, the following progress has been made

• Jalapa Government Design Collaboration: Contact with the Alcalde and department engineer Reyna has been made, and preliminary project designs are being constructed given…

• Topographic mapping: GPS topographic data, which was run on August 16 and 19 to get a preliminary idea of available pressure from hydraulic head, for the length of pipe needed for the conduction line, and distribution line (madre tuberia), considering that we are using the current water distribution lines once we hit the community grid. A rough idea of the number of houses and house locations was also marked with GPS way-points.

• Current Water Committee: I met with the current water committee of Pasmata, lead by Karla Pozo (members Julia (secretary), Sulema (Fiscal), Francisco (president), Luis (vocal), and Esmeralda (treasury), and we began to discuss times for weekly planning meetings, and planned last weeks GPS run, and project goals of the week….

• Laws and Water Rights: On Wednesday, August 17 we had a workshop to go over a new water committee called CAPS, which stands for Committee of Agua Potable and Sanitation, and is through the INAA, and law No 722, to have rights to form a committee with certain rights, outlined in the meeting. The whole water team was in attendance. The process of jumping on board with a CAPS requires national approval (a bunch of bureaucratic forms sent to Managua).

• Water Quality Testing: Department engineer in Jalapa, Reyna and I met to talk with folks at MINSA (a national water testing group), to figure out how to acquire tests for chemicals (from pesticides used upstream), as well as parasites, such as giardia and cryptosporidium pi. We are waiting for more information on how we can acquire testing, since I haven’t found anyone here who knows what cryptosporidium eve. I also spoke with Greg (last name) an old FCP field worker who spent a great deal of time installing water projects in Jalapa, who now lives in Leon, Nicaragua, and he made recommendations per his own knowledge and the contacts and knowledge of his wife who did water testing in Managua for some time. They have given me some leads in Managua that I will probe for next week. Knowing what’s in the water is of the upmost importance before forking out thousands of dollars to install a project.

Reyna made a suggestion that we look for statistics of cases of parasites and evaluate parasites in the water from that angle. This idea makes me uneasy for so many reasons.

Thus far we have nutrient and bacterial tests for the Piedras source and current source, which does in fact show a appreciable decrease in total fecal coliforms going upstream from the current source (~50col/100ml to ~14/100ml), but surely indicates the need for chlorination, as these tests show that while there may not be harmful pathogens in the water, their certainly is poop in there.

• Local Donor and Land Owner Meetings: Karla and I are working together to create times to meet with local farmers and to go over the CAPS law book and acquire forms necessary to apply as a CAPS member, gaining the rights thereby granted (or whatever, I’m not a lawyer :)). We are also planning to meet the president of Somoto’s Rotary club (nearby town to Jalapa), as Travis has been hard at work meeting with local Rotary contacts in Boulder (and in Denver Travis?)

Pending Activities:

• Preliminary design of system for an understanding of project donor needs, designing with two different programs (EPAnet) and with GoodWater V1.1 from a well known professor at the University of Florida to check the designs both by the EPAnet software as well as the designs by the department of the alcalde. This design is likely to entail:

o Conduction line and distribution line diameters, lengths, and spatial location.
o Storage tank (for peak demand times)
o Chlorination tank
o Filter (potentially)
o Sedimentation Tank (likely, the water turbidity is 40 NTU)
o Miscellaneous items I’m forgetting


• Meeting with Somoto Rotary Club to talk over the details of the project, and to hopefully gain support from them in some capacity.

• Conduct the needed water tests to feel sure that this source is going to be an improvement.

• Meeting with the farmers to get written agreements stating that we can use their land to lay the pipes, and to use a agreed upon amount of water through the controlled restraining of Las Piedras (from what it looks like if we can use even 1/10 of the available water that should sustain Pasmata for years to come.

• Continue to make community visits to get to know people, and to listen to their needs and hear the whole story.

I love this work! More posts in the weeks to come!

A Bridge to Saint Peter

On 3/6/08, Dan and Hannah followed up on their November visit to San Pedro (see below). We went by moto, reducing the trip from 5 hours by mule to about 2 ½ hours. We left the bike at a pulperia (convenience store) about an hour’s walk from San Pedro and surveyed the trail as we went.

We met at Juan Quintero’s home, where we stayed in December, and met with several of his family members and the Alcaldito, or “Little Mayor,” of the town, who is San Pedro’s CPC representative at the Municipal Assembly. We discussed our ideas and expectations, and we were surprised to hear that many people expected us to build a highway- rumors are circulating that the Danish want to fund a real road between Jalapa and San Pedro. They assumed we were a part of this, as the first NGO people to visit San Pedro in 10 years or more. We clarified that we intend to focus only on what they reported as the “most grave” section of trail. We want to reduce the river crossings from 3 to 1, and construct a primitive mule-wide bridge that would clear the high water mark and make the trail passable during the rainy season. This disappointed them but they admitted it would be an improvement, since with the current trail they are cut off from Jalapa for several months during the rains.

They told us it’d be cheaper do the construction with machines from the mayor’s office, but we’d need 5 barrels of gas- at a cost of about $700. When asked where they’d get this money, they said they expected us to bring it. They were surprised when we told them that we don’t have that kind of funding, and we proposed doing raffles and other fundraisers, but they said they were “too poor.” We had assumed that the town would donate the labor (as all other communities have with FCP’s past projects) to build the bridge and gather raw materials (wood, stones, etc.), and when we proposed this, they again replied “we’re too poor;” they wanted us to give them money for gas or pay for their labor.

This was frustrating- whenever we proposed that the community share a stake in the investment, they responded, “we’re too poor.” I wanted to shake Don Juan- who we are relatively close with at this point- “are you telling me you’re too poor to donate a couple of work days from your nonexistant schedule build a bridge, so that your children won’t drown crossing the river; so you can bring your sick to the hospital; that will connect your town to commerce and provide (literally!) a road out of poverty?!” Instead, I took some deep breaths and explained this in calmer terms, adding that we chose this community only after they reached out to us, and so far, they have shown great organization, cohesiveness and motivation for progress. I also reminded myself that people here are used to receiving projects part and parcel, with no personal investment. Many orgs actually pay people to work on their own projects. This was the case in San Pedro when the the school was built 10 years ago, so they had reason to hope for it. We left town feeling disenheartened but as we thought through it, we realized how valuable FCP’s Huertos program is. Most communities are like San Pedro at first- completely disempowered by poverty, waiting for NGOs to bring them projects-- paying them to work . . . and feeding them. . . for 6 months while the project happens. We don’t experience this with new projects in the Huertos communities- they already understand that if they want something they’ll have to work for it- unpaid. We bring an initial investment of seeds and tools, and (with educational workshops) expect the beneficiaries to do the labor themselves. If they don’t follow through, their garden fails and we take the tools back. People learn that from a single seed, things can grow- this is the great metaphor of the Huertos. This seems to be very eye-opening whole communities, and facilitates work on future projects, as people understand that our role is to provide a seed that they will nurture and then reap. Not having gone through this in San Pedro, we are beginning well, at the beginning.

We scheduled another meeting for mid-April; we will invite all of the leaders and prominent families in town. We took names from Juan and we hope the ideas we planted on Friday will grow and that people will begin to think creatively about what they can contribute, enabling us to move forward with the project. At best, we were each certainly confronted with the realities of our conflicting assumptions, and all parties left the meeting realizing that some major reevaluation would have to take place to reach the compromises that will make this project happen.

Women's Foundation trip to Quilali for Treatment

On January 18, Hannah accompanied a group of women to the Hospital in Quilali, as part of her work on behalf of the Women’s Foundation. Quilali is another municipality in the department of Nueva Segovia, 2-3 hours from Jalapa on bumpy dirt roads. We transported the women in one of the converted Land-Rovers that are the Jalapa ambulances.

FMJ coordinates with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health (MINSA) to bring women who need pap-smear follow up and cervical cancer treatment to the gynecologist in Quilali, as there is not a gynecologist in Jalapa. Women also go to Ocotal, Esteli, and Managua, in extremely grave cases. For the Quilali trips, the Jalapa hospital donates an ambulance to bring the women to Jicaro, a neighboring municipality about an hour and a half away. Ramon Iban, the director of Jalapa’s hospital, coordinates with the hospital director in Jicaro to use one Jicaro’s ambulances for the second leg of the trip.

When we arrived in Quilali, the hospital was nearly empty so they attended to us right away. We were luck with this, as women from the foundation told me stories of waiting up to 5 hours in the hospital before being seen. . . We were also lucky, because the 5 women who went that day didn’t need any major treatments- some just needed a consult on their most recent results, and/or follow up paps. Everything went well; we were blessed with all good news!

Although I am a stranger and not technically part of FMJ, I felt the women lean on me for support, as I checked them in at the hospital, helped them read (and explain) their results, and had to track down the hospital director in Jicaro, who forgot to tell his staff we could take the ambulance- never taking “no” for an answer- even when I had to personally go to his house and pull him out of bed on a Sunday morning. That is another story in itself, but each step of the way, walking in FMJ’s shoes, I realized how much of a difference their work makes.

Everyone was relieved on the long ride home, and we passed the time telling stories and discussing our experiences. The women agreed that FMJ’s work was invaluable to their comfort dealing with their health problems, and that they felt personally cared for by the foundation, who hunt them down, making sure they know when their appointments are, and ensure they arrive for them, and coordinating with MINSA to make getting there easier.