Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Development of Sustainable Water Systems in Yoro, Honduras
EPA Grant Number: SU832494Title: Development of Sustainable Water Systems in Yoro, Honduras
Investigators: Jones, Sharon A. , Brandes, David , Perrone, Debra , Alarcon, Arno , Fisher, Carolyn , Flath, Ben , Garcia, Margaret , Geklinsky, Tiffany , Gonzalez, Lori , Hockett, Will , Kaufer, Adam , Lemken, Michael , Lopera, Vanessa , Niblick, Briana , Diaz, Daniela Ochoa , Roscoe, Gregory , Tjioe, Marco , Verbyla, Matthew
Institution: Lafayette College
EPA Project Officer: Page, Angela
Phase: I
Project Period: September 30, 2005 through May 30, 2006
Project Amount: $10,000
RFA: P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet (2005) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: P3 Challenge Area - Safe and Sustainable Water Resources , Pollution Prevention/Sustainable Development , P3 Awards , Sustainable and Healthy Communities
Objective:
Lafayette College’s Chapter of Engineers without Borders (EWB-LC) started in 2003 with a focused mission to provide sustainable infrastructure solutions in the Yoro Region of Honduras using multidisciplinary student groups. Such an effort matches service-learning within a college environment with the sustainable development of small-scale infrastructure projects in another country. A multidisciplinary approach to such an effort increases the cooperation between professors and students of different majors so that students apply their individual skills in a real-world context and benefit from the interaction with students of other disciplines. Students involved in such activities then become professionals who can look beyond the walls of their discipline to solve problems.
However, accomplishing such a service-learning effort is complex and can be difficult for new college chapters. For an infrastructure project to be sustainable throughout its life-cycle, designers must understand all of the constraints including economic, environmental, social, as well as technical. At the same time, college design teams are limited in terms of travel to developing countries, understanding of new cultures including language, and experience applying knowledge to real-world situations. EWB-LC recognized a need for an organizational framework that can be used by college campuses to support such service-learning opportunities. Based on our previous experience developing a rural water system in the Yoro Region of Honduras, EWB-LC used the P3 Phase One project to develop such an organizational framework with a focus on rural infrastructure. We call it the Community-Oriented Design and Evaluation Process for Sustainable Infrastructure (hereafter referred to as the CODE-PSI).
Our approach integrates the social and economic aspects with the environmental considerations throughout the problem-solving process. The Phase One P3 Project allowed us to test CODE-PSI in a real-world setting within the communities of La Fortuna and Tule where the technical problem is relatively simple: bring water to the people and offer them a means of disposing of it properly. The challenge in La Fortuna-Tule was to design a system that, with the social and economic assets of the community, will remain effective over time without harm to the environment.
We met our objective with a combination of extracurricular student activities and a team of students in a spring semester course dedicated to the project. We spent the Fall Semester organizing our student team and preparing to assess conditions in La Fortuna-Tule. Students traveled to La Fortuna-Tule in January 2006 to gather enough baseline information on community and bio-physical conditions to develop several alternative solutions. In addition, students began to develop the necessary partnerships through community meetings, house surveys, soccer games, shared meals, and collaborative field work. During Spring 2006, students evaluated lessons learned from our previous project in the adjacent community of Lagunitas to identify areas for improvement within CODE-PSI. We then investigated several technical and educational alternatives for La Fortuna-Tule, and developed a more rigorous method to evaluate sustainability of these alternatives over the life-cycle.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
Our most important outcome is the refined CODE-PSI. Unlike other frameworks, this method evaluates aspects of environmental sustainability as well as the often forgotten aspects of economic and social viability throughout the full life-cycle of each project. For rural infrastructure projects, the community needs to initiate contact with the student group; this establishes community partnership with the student group. As objectives are developed, the student group learns about the community’s culture and molds the project to their communities’ needs. Once the project is designed and implemented, success towards sustainability is evaluated over time. This allows the student group to incorporate feedback into its next project. The six steps of CODE-PSI are:
Step 1: Establish Project and Determine Overall Goals
Step 2: Site Assessment and Planning
Step 3: Sustainability Evaluation of Alternatives and Community Buy-in
Step 4: Implementation
Step 5: Checking and Corrective Action
Step 6: Review
By testing CODE-PSI on La Fortuna-Tule, we accomplished a second objective and developed an innovative, sustainable, solution to meet the community’s water and sanitation needs. The specific project for La Fortuna balances the elements of people, prosperity, and planet by addressing community health and safety via access to water and sanitation, an improved watershed via sanitation and greywater disposal, increased potential for economic gain from agriculture particularly given the saved time from water hauling, and community building. As such, the implementation of this water/sanitation system can be expected to substantially improve the quality of life for community members of La Fortune-Tule in both the short- and long- term.
The water and sanitation infrastructure system for La Fortuna-Tule is projected to cost $23,500 before contingencies, transportation, and education costs. The ongoing annual costs are expected to be $450 which includes chlorine for shock chlorination, replacement sand for the drinking water filter and the greywater filter, replacement pipes and pipe fittings, and other miscellaneous costs. This annual cost requires each family to pay a monthly fee of 20 lempiras which is within the range suggested by Peace Corps members during our January 2006 visit.
Conclusions:
We accomplished the objectives for Phase I by developing a design for the La Fortuna-Tule water system, and CODE-PSI. The success of the project was strongly influenced by the partnerships developed and the diversity of the student team. Students and partners increased the variety of ideas which allowed us to evaluate several viable alternatives to solve the problems.
Supplemental Keywords:
Community-based, Developing country, Design-cycle, Education, Infrastructure, Rural, Sanitation, Service-learning, Water, RFA, Scientific Discipline, Geographic Area, Sustainable Industry/Business, Sustainable Environment, Technology for Sustainable Environment, Ecology and Ecosystems, Urban and Regional Planning, Environmental Engineering, International, sustainable water use, urban planning, environmental sustainability, recovery, drinking water, conservation, cost benefit, Honduras, sustainable urban environment, resource recovery, water conservation, rainfall harvesting, environmental cost analysis, environmental educationP3 Phase II:
Community-Oriented Design and Evaluation Process for Sustainable Infrastructure | Final ReportThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.