Hi all,

The Ecuador team from UNC-Chapel Hill is traveling to Ecuador on Monday
05/21.  Their project mentor plans to travel with them, but a potential
conflict just came up so they're looking for a back-up in case he cannot
travel with them as planned.  This is an assessment trip and the project is
water supply and quality related.  Please see below for more information on
the trip from Rhea Patel, the Ecuador team lead.

PLEASE email Rhea (rdpa...@email.unc.edu) and/or myself if you may be able
to help.

Thanks!
Katie Boniface
561-632-0769

*From Rhea:*
We are traveling from May 21st to May 30th but planning to leave El Inga
earlier for Quito so we could be back by May 28th if the mentor wants to
fly out early.  Here is a blurb from our pre- assessment report to send out:

 *1.0           **INTRODUCTION*

Since 2009, the Daniel A. Okun Chapter of Engineers Without Borders at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (EWB-USA, UNC) has worked with
the community of El Inga to help develop a more efficient and safer water
system. Recently, the community’s water distribution system was retrofitted
by an in-country engineer in order to capture and transport more water from
a natural spring in the mountains to homes. However, the community leader
of El Inga discovered during a post-construction inspection that the water
at the source is “black,” there is low water pressure in certain homes, and
that pipes on roads are beginning to come out of the ground. Thus, the
purpose of this report is to outline and describe the tasks to examine
these problems during our assessment trip in June 2012. *
*

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*2.0           **PROGRAM BACKGROUND*

This program and project were identified during a reconnaissance mission
funded by a non-profit in Ecuador, Fundación Natura, in early April 2009.
The long-termgoal of this program is helping the local water committee
become self-sufficient and develop the capacity to manage their water
system and quality problems without outside assistance. Following our
assessment in June 2010, we provided the community with conceptual drawings
on how to retrofittheir current system to capture more water at their
source and increase their water supply. The community took these conceptual
designs to a local engineer, who designed construction plans to retrofit
their current system with larger storage tanks and pipes to store and
transport more water.

Construction on the new system began in May 2011, but the community was
still concerned about water quality issues since their water source is
poorly protected andanimals often graze above it. In June 2011, the group
tested water quality for microbial contamination and discovered that there
were low levels of *E. coli* and fecal coliform bacteria. After speaking
with community leaders, we intended to return in December 2011 to install a
simple chlorination disinfection system. However, community president
Fabian Alquinga communicated to us that because of available funding, a
chlorination system was being installed in the community. In January 2012,
we learned from Fabian Alquinga that construction on the new system was
complete, but there are three main problems with the system: (1) the
community has “black”, contaminated water at the source, (2) homes had very
low water pressure, and (3) the pipes were coming out of the ground in the
roads. Based on these concerns, our group is planning to return to El Inga
in May 2012 to assess the causes of these issues.