UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Blog Post 3 Week 4 7/15-7/20 By the start of our last week we had finished the construction of the first spring catchment and were putting the final touches on the third catchment. When we conducted the new flow rate being delivered to the community we found that it was twice as much as compared to last year, a huge success! We were using the extra labor we had available to replace old pipeline and connect the new spring catchments to the storage tank. Besides spending our time completing construction related tasks we began completing important assessment related activities. An essential part of the trip was to assess the feasibility of future projects that were in need in the community. Through the first three weeks which included some preliminary data collection we deduced that there were three viable future projects. These included, a new water storage tank, a new pipeline connecting the communities current storage tank to the beginning of the distribution line, and a new...

The second and third week of the trip flew by as our days were jam packed with work. We would get up everyday at 6 to make breakfast at 6:30 so that we could arrive on-site at 8 am. We would have a meeting with the contractor and labor to go over goals for the day and work on site until 5 pm (we would do half days on Saturdays and generally take Sundays off). We would eat dinner right after until 6:30 pm. After that would usually spend an hour or two typing up our field daily reports as well as make any important revisions to our plans that happened frequently due to site conditions. We would usually be completely done with work around 8 or 9 pm. A couple of nights we had to work later due to the necessity of making further design changes. The second and third week of the trip flew by as our days were jam packed with work. We would get up everyday at 6 to make breakfast at 6:30 so that we could arrive on-site at 8 am. We would have a meeting with the contractor and labor to go o...

We have spent the first week and a half in La Huaylla, Peru (a community of 270 households) reuniting with old friends, preparing our plans with a local contractor and municipality, and beginning construction of the first of two spring boxes. We have also had the opportunity to present at the first of two major community meetings and prep the local water committee with our plans and community participation requirements. For a bit of background, this the second trip that our Peru project has took through the non-profit UC Davis chapter of Engineers Without Borders. On our previous trip we collected data and assessed the viability of a project to increase the sustainability, supply, and quality of the communities water. Unfortunately, community members only have intermittent access to water and many only can rely on having water in the morning. We decided that on this current trip we would construct two catchment structures that would collect groundwater that seeps from the side o...