#Cuatro Comunidades
#Tamara
#New Communities

Cuatro Communidades

Thursday 10.30 was the FODA workshop. Nearly the entire Junta, the health promoter, the president of one of the community's patronatos, and the director of a nearby high school were present. Ing. Serrano presented the construction plans and a cronograma for the project.

Monday 11.04 Ing. Serrano, Tamar and John spent the morning at the construction site defining the level of the contruction platform and marking the location of the plant and the letrine. We have decided to put the flushable letrine directly adjacent to the plant so the operator will not have to go outside to use it. There will also be a sink for hadwashing outside the door of the letrine. In the office, we are in the process of buying materials.

This Saturday 11.08 an excursion of 60 community members will visit Ojojona.

Tamara

On Friday 10.31 Antonio and John went to Tamara to measure the alkalinity of the water entering and exiting the plant. The results of those tests will be sent to Tiffany. The plant was functioning satisfactorily, but not very well. Flocs and broken flocs continued to rise in the near ends of some of the tanks. We suggested to Carlos that he purge sludge from the bottom of the tanks as often as three times a day since accumulated sludge could be the problem

We stopped by the plant Monday 11.03 and learned that Carlos continued to have problems with rising flocs and sludge, even purging frequently. We decided to empty and remove the modules from one of the sed tanks to investigate. The horizontal tubes used to support the entrance tubes had come out of place, allowing the entrance tubes to fall down with their ends resting on the bottom of the tank. This was likely obstructing flow, causing most of the flow to leave from the shorter two entrance tubes, and breaking what flocs were leaving from the longer two tubes. To resolve this problem we put the support tubes back in place, tying them to the entrance tubes with nylon cord so they don't come out of place. We also removed the vertical nipples from the ends of the entrance tubes so that they release the water and flocs farther above the bottom of the tank.

Carlos is going to evaluate how well the changes are working in the first tank, and will make the same changes in the other tanks later this week if he thinks they are helping.

New Communities

Jacobo spoke with the mayor of Gracias and he is going to select a date for us to go there and give a presentation and present a budget to all interested parties in the community. We plan to contact the mayor of Guimaca and request that he organize a similar meeting if he is interested.

We sent a turbidimeter to Atima, Santa Barbara with Katherine Strass, a Peace Corps volunteer in Santa Barbara. The mayor there has shown interest in a treatment plant. Katherine will collect information on the water system and send it to us. If a project there seems feasible we will try to give a presentation when we are in the area presenting in Gracias.

Thursday 11.06 we will give a presentation to they mayor in Villa de San Francisco.