#Cuatro Comunidades
#Tamara
#Marcala
#Flow Control Modules
#Promotion of New Projects

Cuatro Comunidades

Construction continues to progress well. Nearly all of the bricks are laid for the tank walls and they have begun to build the foundations for the chemical tables. The polycarbonate panels for the floc and sed modules arrived Thursday 12.11. Other miscellaneous materials should arrive later this week so that all is ready to begin assembling the modules when the students are here in January.

After discussing with Monroe and the design team, we decided on the size of the floc lamella and arrived at a method for installing the plaques that will form the entrance manifolds in the bottom of the sed tanks.

Tamara

As of Thursday 12.11, aproximately 150 gpm were arriving to the plant from La Chorrera. Earlier in the week the Junta had fixed a broken pipe in the conduction line. With the Manzanal and La Chorrera, so much flowrate is arriving that the new pressure-break box that the Junta built is overflowing because there is not enough capacity in the pipe from the box to the plant to carry all of the water. However, 180 gpm are arriving to the plant, which is nearly full capacity and should be plenty to supply the community. The Junta will need shut off the Manzanal or devise a way to reduce flow from La Chorrera to prevent the pressure-break box from overflowing, since this overflow will cause erosion.

With Engineer Wil, we revised the design for the conduction line and found quite a few inconsistencies. It appears that the first part of the line should have capacity for 175 gpm and the rest has capacity for about 210 gpm. When we visited La Chorrera last week, only 108 gpm were passing through the first section. More than that is now arriving to the plant, but the increase could be due to extra flowrate introduced later in the line through a connection the the Penitentiary conduction line. The reduced flow could be due to the lack of a cleaning valve at an early low spot in the conduction line.

Although the current situation of the conduction line has improved quite a bit, furthur study of the line would be helpful to prevent problems in the future and to insure that once they are unable to inject water from the penitentiary's line there will still be suficient flowrate.

With the new high flow, the plant was functioning Thrusday, but not optimally. Thursday the incoming turbidity was 10 NTU and the outgoing 5 or 6 NTU. We thought the high effluent turbidity was due to dirty sed tanks and some clogged sed tank entrance tubes. Flocs were forming, but relatively small ones. The plant seems to form better flocs when the flowrate is well below the design flow. However, when the flow is too low (40 gpm) Carlos is not able to form flocs, so there is a lower limit.

Friday 12.12 Antonio went to Tamara to help Carlos and Karin clean the plant. The emptied and cleaned all floc and sed tanks. When reinstalling the floc modules, they glued the spacers together so that they will not fall appart when removed. They also installed a 2" bronze globe valve on the exit tank where the operator fills the bucket for filling the chemical barrels. The handle on the old 2" PVC globe valve had become brittle and broken, likely due to exposure to sun or chlorine. In future plants we need to remember that these large PVC globe valves are not sufficiently durable.

Marcala

Tamar traveled to Marcala Monday 12.08 and Tuesday 12.09 to check up on plant performance there. I worked with Oscar, the plant operator who has been working at the plant longest. In Marcala they use a valve to administer the chlorine, different than the other AguaClara plants that use a CCC. Since the level in the chlorine stock tank changes significantly, (the tank holds 1,100L) the chlorine dose changes as well. On the data sheets Oscar is only recording yes/no if he is applying chlorine. ADEC is monitoring the chlorine levels, and they vary from 0.1mg/L to 2.5mg/L, which is expected when there is no instrument to ensure constant flow of chlorine. Additionally, the chlorine flows through 3 elbows which are not stable and also contribute to varying levels of chlorine being applied.
Another problem in Marcala is that sometimes the Municipality is late with buying chlorine, and ADEC claims they are buying very old chlorine stock at a discounted price. Nonetheless, the plant is performing well with turbidity results. The turbidity was entering the plant at 12NTU and leaving at under 2NTU while I was there.
In January we hope to define a better working relationship with ADEC, APP and Cornell. We currently feel that although Fred constantly extends the invitation to work at Marcala, we would like to be clear with ADEC that we are available for capacitation help with the operators, and if we will be working at the plant in an educational context to explain that as well.

Flow Control Modules

As suggested by Scott, Antonio rotated the float 180 degrees in the Ojojona and Tamara flow control modules. We will monitor these modules over the next weeks to see whether they clog less than they did previously.

Promotion of New Projects

We mentioned IAF (Inter-American Fountation) to Jacobo and Arturo, but they said it would not be a viable funding source for AguaClara. First, APP has already received millions of dollars in funding from IAF and they said that they won't be able to receive any more in the near future. Second, they said that IAF normally does not provide much funding for water infrastructure projects like AguaClara. Normally they are looking for grass-roots initiatives.

Jacobo thinks tha SETCO, a Honduran governmental organization that uses international donations to fund infrastructure projects, could be a very good funding source for AguaClara. They only provide funds for materials, but that would still be a significant help. They could provide similar support to what Alianza para el Agua is providing for the 4 Communities plant. In some cases, the municipality would likely be able to find the rest of the funding. We plan to make proposals to SETCO for plants in Agalteca and Guaimaca. Gracias, Lempira could also be a good project for SETCO, once we have reliable turbidity data from there and know how the treatment plant will fit into other improvements they plan to make to the water system.

We hope to schedule a meeting in January with Monroe and a small group of people from different NGO's to have a discussion about how to move further and branch into other organizations resources and funding sources.