Honduras Interns Progress Report
Date: 4/29/08
Location: Tamara
Tamara Construction and Socialization
WORK COMPLETED THIS WEEK
*Construction Update: They are finishing the plastering today. Hopefully they will start working on the roof structure tomorrow or the next day. We are waiting to get the plant closed in and secure to start building the sed and floc modules.
*We never really finalized the design for the 2" foam drain pipes in the sed tank. For now, we will just leave ports underneath the canal in each sed tank.
*No progress has been made on the house for the plant operator. The Junta is not sure it has the funds to do the job. Making sure the house gets built should be a priority.
*Several members of Rotary International visited Tamara last week unannounced. They were in Honduras visiting a water treatment plant in Comayagua and had heard about our project. Alejo, the president of the Tamara Junta was the only person who met with them.
*We designed and put in an order for materials to connect the plant to the conduction line, build a distribution box to distribute water between the three distribution tank, and bring water from the plant to the distribution box and the to the tanks. We plan to use the old hypochlorinator on top of the first and smallest tank as the distribution box.
FUTURE PLANS, ONGOING TASKS
*Revise the manual written at Cornell last year for the lamina modules. This will probably happen after we start building the modules and can take pictures.
*Support with Yovani (Tamara fontanero) about chlorine and collecting data
*Help the Junta with a maintence plan for the sources
*Plan to start taking measurements for an as-built plan of Tamara in AutoCAD this week.
*Sent the floc tank specs to Leslie. She will send us a baffle design within two weeks.
*Discussing with Monroe and others what slope we should have from the sides toward the center in the bottom of the sed tanks.
*Once we get a hydraulic design from Cornell, Ing. Serrano would like to start designing a plant for Las Cuatro Communidades, since that's likely the next site.
La 34 (not till later in the year, closer to rainy season)
*Communicate to set up a visit to La 34
*Make minor repairs and capacitate Jose Angel
Marcala
Antonio, Carol and John traveled to Marcala Wed April 23 - Fri April 25.
*We toured the plant Wednesday
*We gave an all-day capacitation Thursday to ADEC staff, the two plant operators and a few other community leaders. Even the mayor was there for part of it. The workshop was a combination of the three afternoon workshops that we gave in Tamara. We think it was a little overwhelming for one day, especially for the operators.
*Friday morning we did a practical capacitation at the plant. This seemed to be more effective than the classroom workshop, although the both were probably necessary. Late in the morning Fred started filling the floc tank and we made flocs with only about 50 gal/min of flow. We left them with FCMs for sulfate and chlorine.
*Fred stopped by the Tamara plant Sunday on his way to Tegucigalpa and said they are having problems with water levels in the plant. The water level is too high in the floc tank. He thought this could be because there is too much headloss somewhere or because the exit from the plant leveling tank is acting as a weir and keeping the water level too high.
Ojojona - Carol
*Follow up on monitoring
*We went to Ojojona on Tuesday April 29th. The meeting to re-elect the new Junta has been moved again. We are not sure of the date now. It has now been moved 3 times and I'm still not sure despite all APP's efforts that it will happen anytime soon. This is worrisome as it was decided that the tariff would be raised after the new Junta is elected. I think it is important to have the tariff raised before the rain starts, and in Ojojona I think they start getting rain the end of May.
Float valve for AguaBlanca
*We installed a float valve in the AguaBlanca system the other day. Originally we used two 20 gallon buckets that we connected with a Y connector and two valves. However, the concentration to last more than a day was too great it allowed very little control over the dosing. For example at 50 gal/min position 1 of the dosing hose gave a dose of 1.6 mg/L and position 2 a dose of 2.9 mg/L. They gave us money and we are going to buy a 55 gallon barrel and go back later and install the 55 gallon barrel instead of the buckets.
Meetings
FCM - Carol and Antonio
*We were thinking that it might be a good idea to give a general overview of the FCM's to the technicans of APP to get the word out and to see if we can get hipocloradors built to make it easier to install a float valve in the future.
Circuit Rider - Entire Team
*We discussed with Fred the idea of a Circuit Rider who would provide support to all the Junta's who have water treatment plants.
Discussing it further we think it a good idea to have a meeting between Fred, Jacobo and Arturo first. This will give us a better idea of the options for how this could function. We were thinking when Fred makes his next visit to Honduras in May. Then we would have a meeting between the four current Junta's (Marcala, La 34, Tamara and Ojojona) probably in June to see the opinions of the four communities and finalize the details.
NGO's - Entire Team
*We started planning for the NGO meeting in June. The scheduled date decided on between Arturo and Jacobo is Thursday June 12th.
The list that we started is below (taken from the webpage and suggestions from Arturo and Jacobo)
#Vision Mundial
#AHJASA
#Catholic Relief Service
#USAID
#OPS
#ADEC (in Marcala)
#Zanmorano (Erika Tenorio)
#Club Rotarios (Honduran, International)
#CESAL
#IRWA
#Save the Children
#CARE
#SANAA
#UNICEF
#PALTO
#Peace Corp
#New Forest Project
#Centro de Idiomas at Cornell University
*There are still a few others I found that I need to look into but this is the tentative list
*Antonio went out the other day and did a price comparison of locations for the meeting. He looked at three different hotels and hopefully we will have that finalized by next week.
*Still to do is start making invitations, create a profile of the type of persons we want to attend from within the organizations, and putting together a list of things we want to cover in the meeting.
New Communities - Carol
*Community standing/more information on New communities
*We had the new communities meeting on Friday April 18th.
*Invited were
**Zanmorano
**4 comunidadtes
**Agalteca
**Mate de Platano
**Villa de San Francisco (centro)
**Cantarranes
**Talanga
*The top 4 communities came, we think we had limited attendance because the original date was Thursday April 17th and on Wednesday we found out there was a strike so we had to move the date to Friday.
*Overall it was successful and I think we have at least two great candidates for water treatment plants.
Zambrano looks promising and they are showing interest and have a very organized Junta. The site for the plant however would be about 4 km from the center of Zambrano.
*The 4 communitites also look very promising. We are told there is money there to build a water treatment plant but Arturo hasn't been to clear about how much.
*Agalteca and Mate de Platano also seem promising but Agalteca has already turned down another water project because of a raise in tariff, though we don't know why. Mate de Platano's water system is badly built and overflows in a pressure break but not enough water arrives at the community. We visited *Thursday April 17th and Engineer Serrano is helping them with a design to do a budget for repairs.
*On Monday April 21st we met with the Alcalde of Mercedes, Ocotepeque with Engineer Santiago. He is working there to develop the conduction line and water system. There is also apparently money there that could contribute to a water treatment plant. The population is about 500 houses and is about 8 hours from Tegucigalpa. They had wanted us to do a presentation on Saturday April 26th but it was too premature and so was decided to wait until we had a chance to revise the community and the complications that a project that distance could bring.
*There is also a chance we could get a cluster of plants together as Mercedes is near Tambla (plant where Engineer Serrano is trying to get funding). There is another community near by but it only has 228 houses which would mean a steep increase in the tariff.
Float Valve Installation - Carol & Antonio
*Communities currently monitoring their chlorine use and residual include: Ojojona, Tamara (La Flor), Zambrano, and 4 comunidades (see below for Ciudad Espana).
*In Zambrano after we installed the last float valve they had problems with their conduction line and so we are waiting another couple of weeks to see how the float valve functions.
*The 4 comunidades are still not chlorinating.
*I made a guide for Antonio and future technicians to follow with pictures of how to make the tables, but it still needs some revising.
FUTURE WORK
*Collect health data for Tamara
*Organize collected data for Ojojona and start writing something for paper
*Plan for NGO meeting