Community Essay: Developing a sustainable water-delivery system in rural El Salvador

Abstract

Engineers Without Borders-USA (EWB-USA) consists of over 50 professional chapters throughout the country and over 100 student chapters at engineering universities. The goal of EWB-USA is to assist developing communities implement sustainable engineering projects that foster quality-of-life improvements while developing internationally responsible engineers and engineering students. An EWB-USA chapter at Oregon State University (EWB-OSU) has focused efforts on designing a sustainable water system to provide clean water for two communities in El Salvador. The communities are located in remote and mountainous terrain and have little available data describing local resources. The health of the communities has suffered due to a lack of clean drinking water. Small teams from the EWB-OSU chapter have now twice visited the communities to collect data using global positioning system (GPS) receivers. Financial support for travel costs has come from a variety of sources. The local community has helped field teams locate important resources and verify information to support the design process. Although considerable project progress has occurred, challenges have resulted from working in remote and rugged landscapes and also from land use and ownership considerations in the communities. We describe in this essay EWB-OSU activities to design and implement an engineering project to provide freshwater to rural communities in a remote, rural community.

Keywords

• Environmental engineering
• drinking water
• development projects
• community involvement
• developing countries
• rural areas
• colleges and universities
• geographic information systems
• site surveys