Clean Water to help Mayan village, Guatemala

We are pleased to let you know how much progress we have made. In partnership with the people of Chipozo, we are getting closer to their dream of having safe drinking water readily available year round.

Phase 1 of our project is complete. We finished the construction of the two water tanks: one at the natural spring water source and a distribution tank above the village. This required:

• Over 1200 volunteer hours of community members carrying building materials to the construction site and using machetes to clear the rugged terrain of the pipeline from the lower tank to the upper tank
• Assistance from paid local masons
• 20% of the project cost contributed by the community
• Establishment of the Chipozo Water Committee that is comprised of locally elected village members
• Engineering and project management expertise and sustained fundraising from EWB-RTP volunteers

We have also built 10 tapstands throughout the village and close to the school for easy community access. We look forward to our continued collaboration of the newly elected Chipozo Water Committee and the Chipozo ruling council (COCODE) in order to define the rules of water use and management once the system is complete. We have also generated a detailed technical and commercial Request for Proposal for the solar-powered pumping system

Phase 2 will begin very shortly. We will lay the steel and PVC pipe and install pipe supports from the lower tank to the upper distribution tank, and down from the distribution tank to the tapstands located throughout the community. We will install the chlorination system at the end of this phase.

Donations to the project are critical to enabling Phase 3; purchase and installation of solar panels, electrical control system and pump. Since there is no grid electricity available, this is the only way to get the fresh water from the lower tank to the upper distribution tank (distance of 1100m and elevation of 170m).

Project Objective

EWB-RTP and the indigenous Mayan village of Chipozo, Guatemala are building a system to bring clean drinking water to all of Chipozo. With accessible potable water, children can spend more time in school and families more time at work instead of seeking or carrying water and dealing with water-borne disease.

Chipozo is a remote, rugged, high region with no viable drinking water sources. Our needs assessment told us families spend about 6 hours a week retrieving drinking water. The water table is much too low to build wells. People find small springs kilometers from town, get muddy water from local sources, or use rain catchment (in season). Our project will enable the community and EWB to eliminate gastrointestinal illness and redirect human resources and school time now spent obtaining clean water.

Solution

Chipozo requested help from EWB-RTP to design (and fund) a water delivery system to bring water from a distant year-round spring to the community. There is no electrical power available in the remote area near the spring. EWB-RTP designed a system that includes a collector at the spring, a holding tank next to the spring with a pump installed inside, a photovoltaic (solar panel) system to power the pump, a pipeline from the lower tank to an upper distribution tank, and gravity-fed distribution system from the tank to 10 tapstands.

Links:

• short video of Chipozo water project
• EWB-RTP Website