A lot happened this week.
We visited most of the nine wastewater treatment plants around Lake Atitlan here in Guatemala and took detailed notes about each. It seems only half of the wastewater in the major cities is treated and even then very poorly and much less than in rural areas.
The fault doesn't really lie with any particular entity as most everyone is aware of the issue and has the right intentions. It appears that money is lacking for many infrastructure scenarios and the government's limits on nutrients in effluent is higher relative to the US (for example 3 mg/L of phosphorus is acceptable, while most places in the US do not allow anything over 0.1 mg/L). We need to look more into these limits.
The staff at the municipalities for each city were very kind in taking time to give us tours of the plants and I was heartened to see that the members of the municipalities understood the weak points in the treatment (the operator in Solola recognized there was no disinfection in the water and pathogens were entering the vegetables that the effluent water irrigated).
Many NGOs have been extremely kind to us as well. Amigos Del Lago have lent us space for pilot projects and set up many of the meetings with the municipalities and officials. Vivamos Mejor, another NGO, gave us extensive GIS data on water quality around the lake. We have a meeting with Todos Por El Lago on Monday and they are going to give us even more beneficial insight into their implementation of pilas (outdoor sinks) and latrine systems.
Looking forward we still have a few meetings this week and it's almost guaranteed I will be coming back in September with a team of Engineers Without Borders-UC Davis with a P3 from the US Environmental Protection Agency that we recently received, to implement some water infrastructure in a community here. One of the potential options for a project may be to work with IMAP (Instituto Meso-Americano Permacultural), a permaculture center by San Lucas to get their expertise in natural greywater systems. More on this to come after we meet with IMAP again Monday to discuss this plan.
One of our goals for this trip was to gain a perspective on the issues of wastewater treatment around the lake and I believe we more than exceeded that goal.
I think with this understanding, Engineers Without Borders-UC Davis really has tons of opportunity to do good work in this region for years to come.
Imaan Taghavi, undergraduate, Civil Engineering, UC Davis
We visited most of the nine wastewater treatment plants around Lake Atitlan here in Guatemala and took detailed notes about each. It seems only half of the wastewater in the major cities is treated and even then very poorly and much less than in rural areas.
 |
| View of Lake Atitlan from the cemetery in Solola |
The staff at the municipalities for each city were very kind in taking time to give us tours of the plants and I was heartened to see that the members of the municipalities understood the weak points in the treatment (the operator in Solola recognized there was no disinfection in the water and pathogens were entering the vegetables that the effluent water irrigated).
Many NGOs have been extremely kind to us as well. Amigos Del Lago have lent us space for pilot projects and set up many of the meetings with the municipalities and officials. Vivamos Mejor, another NGO, gave us extensive GIS data on water quality around the lake. We have a meeting with Todos Por El Lago on Monday and they are going to give us even more beneficial insight into their implementation of pilas (outdoor sinks) and latrine systems.
Looking forward we still have a few meetings this week and it's almost guaranteed I will be coming back in September with a team of Engineers Without Borders-UC Davis with a P3 from the US Environmental Protection Agency that we recently received, to implement some water infrastructure in a community here. One of the potential options for a project may be to work with IMAP (Instituto Meso-Americano Permacultural), a permaculture center by San Lucas to get their expertise in natural greywater systems. More on this to come after we meet with IMAP again Monday to discuss this plan.
One of our goals for this trip was to gain a perspective on the issues of wastewater treatment around the lake and I believe we more than exceeded that goal.
I think with this understanding, Engineers Without Borders-UC Davis really has tons of opportunity to do good work in this region for years to come.
Imaan Taghavi, undergraduate, Civil Engineering, UC Davis
Comments
Post a Comment