The Engineers Without Borders chapter at SUNY-ESF is approaching its projects with the users in mind.

As of today, they are implementing a gravity-fed water distribution system in Buena Vista, Honduras. This consists of a water tank with plastic pipes buried underground serving a population of 300 people. Until the students came along, the community had stream water flowing though rubber hoses aboveground and only during the rainy season. The water was frequently contaminated with feces and the hoses often leaked. It is thrilling to see this project, started in 2006, finally coming to fruition.

Although the majority of students participating in EWB are environmental resources engineering majors at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, all majors are welcome, and there are non-engineers actively participating. It is a vibrant group with representation from all undergraduate classes and a few graduate students. There will certainly be younger students ready to take over when the current officers graduate.

Buena Vista is a community of subsistence farmers who grow vegetables, sugar cane, yucca, plantains and coffee. Any surplus is sold to generate income to supplement what they grow, but this remains an impoverished village — even by Honduran standards.

EWB stresses community-run projects. In Buena Vista, the point of contact is Junta de Agua, an organization devoted to managing, maintaining and educating the community about their water supply.

It is easy for American groups to visit a site, create a design, build it and leave. Building relationships in the village over time and working with them to create a solution that works is essential. This system was designed to keep maintenance simple and within the means of the villagers. A gravity-fed pump eliminates the need for an outside energy source that the village would have to fund.

EWB has made many trips to the community and has had positive experiences, said Amanda Barnett, club president. Students stayed in a guest house of one of the community members, ate meals with the families and played soccer with their kids. Getting to know the people who use their designs puts a face to all the calculations.

Villagers and students worked together to construct the system; both parties are completely invested. This close relationship bridges cultural gaps, like learning to turn the faucets off when they are not in use. This is to maintain the water pressure necessary to make this gravity-fed system work.

EWB is setting up the framework to allow the club to pursue multiple projects simultaneously. Under the guidance of Stewart Diemont, a professor of engineering, they are writing two grants for ESF to collaborate with a Mexican university, Institute of Ecology (Inecol). A potential project is designing and building a microfiltration system.

In Cusco, Peru, EWB has been in contact with the nongovernmental organization ECOAN (Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos), which focuses on promoting biodiversity. They are interested in a water distribution project that would result in designing a sand filtration system to improve water quality.

Locally, EWB is exploring projects, possibly rain gardens, in Oakwood Cemetery and Thornden Park. The student EWB chapter has a relationship with the Syracuse professional EWB chapter and is looking to collaborate more in the future.

In each of these cases, EWB positions its members as partners with the local community to understand its needs. EWB is not engineering for the sake of gaining experience, but designing projects that really help people.

Leanna Mulvihill is a senior forest engineering major and environmental writing and rhetoric minor. Her column appears every Tuesday. She can be reached at lpmulvih@syr.edu

Published on October 31, 2011 at 12:00 pm