I've been back from Lake Atitlan in Guatemala for a few weeks now and a lot has happened.
Our proposal to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's P3 program that the Guatemala team at Engineers Without Borders-UC Davis submitted was successful in Phase I! We received a grant award that now is going to fund us for a second trip in September to implement greywater reuse systems in communities around Lake Atitlan.
So, for the two months in between we have to prepare.
The Phase I of the P3 proposal (the specific phase we passed) is giving us $15,000 to test the banana ring mulch basin technology. We are going to be optimizing a greywater reuse system while also writing a report for Phase II of the EPA's P3 award process. In April, we travel to Washington DC to showcase our optimal system to a panel of judges. If the report and showcase are selected, we will receive $90,000 dollars for full-scale implementation of the system.
This is an exciting time. We are coordinating with IMAP (that permaculture center that had a school we wanted to work in), although instead of working in the local school, we are going implement a few pilot systems in local households around San Lucas that have been gauged to have an interest in our system and are willing and able to learn the maintenance procedures and give us feedback through IMAP after we leave.
We created a P3 team that is a subset of the Guatemala team, and broke the team into various specializations for each member to focus on a different aspect of the system (i.e., plants, hydraulics, cost analysis, education/outreach, soil science, etc.). We are looking to have pilot systems ready to build in or near Davis in August and then take samples and test them that month prior to travelling.
We are making progress and I can't wait to go back to Guatemala again.
The video below is a pilot project the Guatemala Team built last year. It will be similar to what we are doing for P3: reusing greywater!
Imaan Taghavi, undergraduate student, Civil Engineering, UC Davis
Our proposal to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's P3 program that the Guatemala team at Engineers Without Borders-UC Davis submitted was successful in Phase I! We received a grant award that now is going to fund us for a second trip in September to implement greywater reuse systems in communities around Lake Atitlan.
So, for the two months in between we have to prepare.
The Phase I of the P3 proposal (the specific phase we passed) is giving us $15,000 to test the banana ring mulch basin technology. We are going to be optimizing a greywater reuse system while also writing a report for Phase II of the EPA's P3 award process. In April, we travel to Washington DC to showcase our optimal system to a panel of judges. If the report and showcase are selected, we will receive $90,000 dollars for full-scale implementation of the system.
This is an exciting time. We are coordinating with IMAP (that permaculture center that had a school we wanted to work in), although instead of working in the local school, we are going implement a few pilot systems in local households around San Lucas that have been gauged to have an interest in our system and are willing and able to learn the maintenance procedures and give us feedback through IMAP after we leave.
We created a P3 team that is a subset of the Guatemala team, and broke the team into various specializations for each member to focus on a different aspect of the system (i.e., plants, hydraulics, cost analysis, education/outreach, soil science, etc.). We are looking to have pilot systems ready to build in or near Davis in August and then take samples and test them that month prior to travelling.
We are making progress and I can't wait to go back to Guatemala again.
The video below is a pilot project the Guatemala Team built last year. It will be similar to what we are doing for P3: reusing greywater!
Imaan Taghavi, undergraduate student, Civil Engineering, UC Davis
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