Our work for the summer is to assist with the construction of a water treatment plant for the town of Ojojona. We will also do as much training as possible of the future operators of the plant, and if the construction is completed by the time we leave, we will be doing general troubleshooting to get everything running ok. Or, if all does not get done in time, there will hopefully be a new volunteer to complete this work. I am here with two guys shown here, Scott, or "Escott", (pronounced 'eh-Scott' by Hondurans and us... spanish does not have words with an e then a consonant, thus spaghetti is espaguetis, and spinach is espinacas), and Dan, to the right who is attempting to look hardcore in this photo and like it would be best not to get between him and his pick ax.
We are here to help with more "engineering" related tasks, but often we are just making sure that the drawings are interpreted correctly (and used at all) and things are basically heading in the right direction. When we came a month ago, nothing was done with the construction other than clearing out some of the general shrubbery in the region of the plant. Above, you see one of the preliminary shots when we were excavating. There are a bunch of Hondurans working on the project as this is meant to be a community effort. But on days when they have been short of workers, or there were spare tools lying around as there have been a variety of tasks to do, we have pitched in. This shot is of the initial placement of rebar for a large tank that is going to be the final step of the treatment process that will serve to collect sedimentation before the water is piped down to the town.
Here's a few days later as the rebar for this tank was nearly all put in. The workers in the back are beginning what was a bit lengthy and unpleasant process... more excavation, but this time into bedrock. More on that later.
While up at the plant site, we also take water data of pH and turbidity (how funky the water is) to get a general baseline of the quality of the different water sources that are currently feeding the town. The plant that we are building will have three sources feeding it, which will then be cleaned and in turn feed about 30% of the town. So the plant will not clean everyone's water, but the hope is that the design of this plant will be able to duplicated possibly here, or in other locations through Honduras. Here is me, doing pH testing at a collection box for one of these three sources. From here, the water is fed via a pipe to a storage tank next to the site of the future treatment plant.
This is at a different of one of the three sources and basically has a stream coming in and is a filter that "pre-treats" water before it will eventually go down to the plant. The filter consists of wire mesh to keep out the big stuff and a couple baskets of stones to filter out slightly smaller things before going into a concrete collection box then a pipe to the storage tank and soon, the plant. Right now, these mesh and stone filters are the only thing filtering the water.
And finally, back at the construction site. This past week has mostly been occupied with the workers doing battle with rock to excavate enough for us to put footings in for some other columns of the plant. Unfortunately, we have no jack hammer or anything so fancy. We instead a couple sizes of sledge hammers, and chisels. Yes, this is indeed very tedious work. Here's one of the guys at it with the mini-hammer and chisel. You can see the result of their labor at the top of the photo - all of that rock was removed from that hole. There are 8 other holes like this for other columns, most with a bunch of bedrock. The amount of time spent on this was slightly ridiculous, but no felt it justified the expense of renting some type of equipment.
Next up will be some shots from a little weekend away to Copan, a site of some lovely Mayan ruins in Honduras.
2 comments:
very interesting. no dynamite on the bedrock? or is that not common?
Wow. Lots of hard work. I can't wait to see more construciton updates.
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