#Cuatro Comunidades
#Gracias
#Ojojona
#Tamara
#UNAH Students
#Fundraising and Proposals

Cuatro Comunidades

We attended a meeting Thursday 10.9 with the water board and about 12 people from the 70 houses of the community Aldea Bonita, the community that has still not fully backed the project. Although the turnout was low, the residents who attended were in support of the project. The water board said it would do what is necessary to make sure the rest of Aldea Bonita is behind the project. We hope to sign the construction agreement Saturday 10.18.

Gracias, Lempira

The construction budget for one 800 gpm plant in Gracias is finished and comes to about $145,000 including the community contribution. We think they might need two such plants to satisfy the 20-year projected demand.

Ojojona

The Ojojona water board has contracted a 19-year-old night operator named Jimmy. He has spent the last 14 nights at the plant and they say he has had good results. With the plant cared for during the night, the Ojojona plant performance should improve considerably. We plan to get to Ojojona soon to give more detailed training to Jimmy.

On Monday 10.13 the Ojojona Water Board accompanied us to visit the Tamara plant. From the Board Julia and Martin came, and all three plant operators, Juan, Alexis and the newly hired night operator Jimmy came to Ojojona. We first had a meeting with Danny, America and Moncho. Afterward we toured the plant and had lunch together. We felt that is was a highly positive experience to unite the operators, and we hope to take a trip to Marcala in the late November.

Ojojona is out of alum. Even though they have ordered some, it has still not arrived. We loaned them some from the Tamara plant, but that plant will soon run out as well.

Tamara

A strong flow was arriving from the Chorera for a few days, but now the flow has decreased. The water board thinks it is because the intake has plugged up at the source again. They plan to go next week to clean it. Fortunantly, they recently cleaned the other source, the Manzanal, and with the recent rain it is producing over 100 gpm.

Antonio and Carlos cleaned the entire plant Thursday 10.9 for the first time in about 6 weeks. The floc tank had about one foot of sticky mud on the bottom that was hard to remove. Nick Wobbrock said they have had similar problems in Marcala and have resolved them by cleaing the floc tank every two weeks. One of the floc tank drains was clogged, making the cleaning even more difficult. We think that in future plants the floc tank drains should leave straight from the bottom of the wall instead of with an elbow through the floor. This would make cleaning them easier.

Construction of the operator's house is moving along. 800 of the 1,100 adobes have been made. The community is putting up all of the money for the house.

UNAH Students

Prof. Guadalupe Nuñez from the National University visited the Ojojona plant Friday 10.10 with 15 mechanical engineering students. She has made it an assignment in her product design class to fabricate the float valves from the flow control modules. She says they have the necessary tools in the university to make the parts. We will be putting the group of Honduran students in contact with students at Cornell who are working on the flow control modules.

Fundraising and Proposals

Arturo Diaz, APP's subdirector, just finished a proposal to FORSUDE to build three treatment plants. If approved the project would start sometime next year.

We sent a project description and budget for Agalteca to Cornell so that the fundraising team there can start looking for funds.