Water Supply in Latin America
CEE 402 Engineers Without Frontiers Project Proposal
Submitted: October 15, 2003
Partner Organizations:
 Cornell University - Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
 Agua para el Pueblo
Water Supply Team
Christopher Boone
Peter Burns
Amy Grove
Andrea Gruber
Dale Meck
Kendra Skopp
Sima Thakkar
Advisor: Dr. Monroe Weber-Shirk
cb238@cornell.edu
pgb6@cornell.edu
amg49@cornell.edu
amg66@cornell.edu
dhm6@cornell.edu
kls27@cornell.edu
smt33@cornell.edu
mw24@cornell.edu
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Water is essential to human life. Despite this, many people in the Global South do not have
access to reliable uncontaminated water sources. Agua Para el Pueblo is an example of one nongovernmental organization working to provide clean water to rural communities. A major
objective of this group is to assist in the design and construction of gravity-fed water supply
systems in rural areas.
Design of these systems is an involved and time-consuming task.
Currently Agua Para el Pueblo’s engineers create a specialized spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel
for each individual project. These engineers are eager for a standardized tool to make the design
process more efficient.
The Water Supply Team at Cornell University is developing a tool for this purpose. This is a
continuation of a project begun in the Spring of 2003. Our tool is based in Microsoft Excel.
Given the survey data for a town and water source, the spreadsheet automatically designs a
drinking water transmission pipeline. It will also transfer survey data and flow requirements into
EPANET. EPANET is a free software tool that will allow the local engineers to easily design
the distribution system in the town. This semester we intend to complete the design of the
spreadsheet, which includes the incorporation of Global Positioning System (GPS) survey data
and EPANET, along with a user’s manual. Both the spreadsheet and the manual will be fully
translated into Spanish. During an instructional trip to Honduras, we intend to present our design
tool to engineers from Agua Para el Pueblo for feedback. Upon its completion, our automated
tool will assist engineers in Spanish-speaking, developing countries to efficiently and effectively
design gravity fed water supply systems for rural areas.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction……………………………………................4
Objectives……………………………………...................5
Anticipated Benefits……………………………………...6
Background……………………………………...................
6
Work Plan……………………………………...................
8
Schedule…………………………………….....................11
Team Organization…………………………………….....12
Resources and Needs……………………………………..13
References………………………………………………...
14
Team Background…………………………………….......
15
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INTRODUCTION
Water is an essential resource for life – the most basic human need. There are currently around
1.2 billion people in the world without access to safe drinking water (WWAP, 2003). Limited
access to safe drinking water increases the risk of serious waterborne diseases, such as cholera,
typhoid fever, and dysentery. Before Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras in 1998, 21.3% of the
rural population was without access to clean water (Trevett, 2001). This hurricane, however,
damaged over 1,600 of the existing piped water systems in different communities, leaving an
even greater number of people without water (Trevett, 2001).
Agua Para el Pueblo (APP) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in 1984 that
strives to assist rural communities in Honduras in obtaining access to drinking water. APP does
this by helping design and construct water distribution systems, with a specific emphasis on
community involvement.
The Water Supply Team is working with APP to create a spreadsheet to help engineers design
water supply and distribution systems.
The spreadsheet will aid the design of gravity-fed
distribution systems in small rural communities, particularly in Honduras. This is a continuation
of a previous project from the Spring 2003 semester.
Our team intends to take a trip to Honduras in January in order to gain a greater understanding of
how these systems are currently being designed and to get feedback on our work thus far. This
trip will guide future design considerations, allowing later versions of the spreadsheet to be
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better tailored to the specific needs of these communities. The trip will also broaden the cultural
awareness of the team.
The following section will present a more detailed description of the specific objectives of this
project. In this proposal, we also discuss the anticipated benefits of our project for engineers and
the communities they serve.
Further information on the current situation in Honduras is
provided in the background section. We also provide details on how we intend to achieve our
goals, including our team organization and a tentative project schedule. We include a section
outlining the resources we currently have, along with those we will need in order to complete our
project successfully.
OBJECTIVES
The principle objective of the team is to complete development of a software tool to streamline
the design process of gravity-fed water distribution systems in rural communities in Honduras.
Specifically, the Microsoft Excel based software tool will acquire position and elevation data
from handheld GPS units and precision altimeters. It will use this data to design a transmission
pipeline and storage tank to supply water from an uphill stream or spring down to a village. The
spreadsheet will find critical high points along the distribution system, calculate head loss
throughout the system, and determine an optimal pipe diameter, among other things.
The
spreadsheet will then export the entire design to a Spanish version of EPANET. EPANET is a
water supply modeling and simulation program that is freely available through the internet from
the Environmental Protection Agency. It is unsupported but is easily accessible in both Spanish
and English. An engineer using our tool would then be able to use EPANET to design the
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distribution system within the community, thus completing the design process. Currently, APP
engineers are familiar with EPANET but have not incorporated it into their design process.
Through email correspondence and a trip to Honduras in January, we will work closely with
Agua Para el Pueblo in this endeavor to ensure that the software tool meets their specific needs.
In the longer-term, this highly flexible, user-friendly design tool will aid engineers designing
water distribution systems in other Spanish-speaking developing countries.
However, this
semester’s team will focus specifically on developing a functional design tool for APP engineers
in Honduras.
ANTICIPATED BENEFITS
Upon completion, our project will yield a highly flexible design tool to assist NGO’s in
efficiently and effectively designing gravity-fed water supply systems in rural areas of Honduras.
This software tool, in the form of an automated spreadsheet, will reduce costs and labor in both
the design and implementation processes. It will serve as a universal design tool available to
engineers facing the problem of adequate water supply in developing, Spanish-speaking
countries. Residents of rural communities in these countries will enjoy an improved quality of
life after acquiring access to sources of water. The EWF team members working on this project
will gain exposure to the engineering principles inherent in gravity-fed water distribution
systems. Additionally, the team members will have the opportunity to apply this engineering
knowledge to solve a real-life problem facing residents in developing countries.
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BACKGROUND
Water is inextricably linked to all aspects of life. It is a natural resource that transcends most
attempts at economic, political, and social classifications such as: public, private, customer,
citizen, rural, urban, gender, ethnicity, or race.
Close to one-third of world’s population lives in countries suffering from moderate to high water
stress – where consumption is more than 10% of renewable freshwater resources (WWAP,
2003). The physical limits to fresh water expansion are being realized in many parts of the world.
Terms such as water stress and water scarcity are used to illustrate the amount of freshwater
resources available to nations. Water stress is defined as fresh water resources of fewer than
1,700 cubic meters per person per year, and water scarcity as freshwater resources of under 1,000
cubic meters per person per year (The World Bank, 1999). Given the inability of the present
cultivated water supply to meet the growing demand for freshwater, the emergence of water
scarcity appears unavoidable. Water scarcity is presented as an inevitable result of the collision
of factors such as population growth, improved life style, increased demand for water for
domestic and industrial consumption, and a net decrease in the quantity and quality of water
supplies. As such, the competition for scarce water resources is also expected to increase,
highlighting the importance that existing water resources are allocated more efficiently (Dinar et
al., 1997).
Insufficient financial resources, along with institutional incapacity to build and maintain rural
water systems and sanitation, are impelling central governments in less developed countries to
search for alternative methods of effective water resource management.
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Rural water supply and sanitation systems in Honduras are illustrative of a more recent shift
towards decentralizing water resources administration and management to the community level.
In studying these systems, technical failures – such as inappropriate design, lack of technical
expertise, and inadequate maintenance – have been identified as key obstacles for communities
trying to manage their water supply systems.
Non-governmental organizations, such as Agua Para el Pueblo strive to make people’s lives
better.
APP has been successful because they emphasize community involvement in the
development of water supply systems. They are a local organization, so they know well how to
relate to the people they are helping. Our contact for APP is Jacobo Nuñez. A good deal of time
is required for the design, construction, and maintenance of a water supply system. Any method
by which this process could be made more efficient will be warmly welcomed by these
organizations, and by the communities they are helping.
WORK PLAN
After assessing the work completed to date on the project, our team has compiled a formal work
plan. We have identified the resources currently available to our team and set work plan goals
for the remainder of the semester accordingly.
Initially, we will gather further general
background information on water supply in less-developed countries, and then, more
specifically, water supply in Honduras. We will review the gravity-fed water supply design
spreadsheets that Agua Para el Pueblo engineers are currently utilizing. Furthermore, we will
improve, test, debug, and translate into Spanish the spreadsheet that was developed by the EWF
Spring Semester 2003 team. We then plan to incorporate EPANET into this spreadsheet. Next,
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we will use some of the funding obtained for this project to purchase an inexpensive GPS unit
and a precision altimeter and synchronize their data into the spreadsheet. Shortly after the end of
this semester our team plans to embark on an educational trip to Honduras.
Work Plan Goals:
1. Gather additional background information on water supply in less developed countries.
This includes compiling further general information on water supply in less-developed
countries, as well as additional specific data regarding water supply in Honduras.
2. Review the gravity fed water supply design spreadsheets prepared by Agua Para el Pueblo
engineers.
After analyzing and gaining an understanding of the Agua Para el Pueblo spreadsheets,
we will integrate pertinent data and design calculations into an improved, automated
spreadsheet.
3. Improve the spreadsheet that was developed by the EWF Spring Semester 2003 team.
Our goal here is to ultimately produce an automated spreadsheet that can be employed as
a design tool for gravity fed water supply design in less-developed countries.
a. Test and debug the spreadsheet
The spreadsheet code and formulas will be examined for inconsistencies
and fixed or modified accordingly.
c. Translate the spreadsheet (into Spanish).
The spreadsheet will be translated by members of the group.
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4. Incorporate EPANET into the spreadsheet.
Utilizing EPANET will enable engineers to graphically illustrate projected water
distribution systems.
5. Purchase an inexpensive GPS and a precision altimeter and integrate their data into the
spreadsheet.
Some of the funding obtained for this project will be used to purchase an inexpensive
GPS unit and a precision altimeter similar to those currently used by Agua Para el Pueblo
for surveying. These devices will provide a technologically efficient source of relevant
elevation data to be synchronized and incorporated into the spreadsheet. Both devices
will be left with Agua Para el Pueblo when we visit during our education trip.
6. Documentation
Throughout our project, we will compile detail-oriented, easily understandable
documentation of the procedural steps taken to produce a spreadsheet, integrating GPS
and precision altimeter synchronized data, to be used as an automated design tool for
gravity fed water distribution systems. Our documentation will also include a userfriendly handbook in Spanish outlining the processes of our design tool.
7. Predicting and overcoming challenges
During our project planning, we discussed many possible challenges that could occur as
we develop our design tool. Examples include encountering impediments to successfully
integrating EPANET into our design tool or facing communication difficulties with Agua
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Para el Pueblo due to language barriers. These or other challenges that arise during our
project will be met with a positive, resourceful attitude that will enable us to devise
alternative methods while not compromising the quality or efficiency of our end result.
Therefore, in order to achieve our goals, modifications may be made to the proposal on
an ongoing basis.
8. Go on an educational trip to Honduras.
During winter break, funding will also be used for our team’s travel to Honduras for ten
days to meet with personnel from Agua Para el Pueblo.
We will gain first-hand
knowledge of water supply issues in the region and Agua Para el Pueblo’s designs for
water supply systems. We will present a tutorial on usage of our automated water
distribution system spreadsheet and its integrated GPS and precision altimeter devices.
We will also collect feedback from Agua Para el Pueblo on the design tool. Our trip will
be documented for future use by EWF groups to advance the project further. This trip
will help us to achieve our stated project objectives.
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PROJECT PLANNING SCHEDULE
Gantt Chart: Rural Water Supply Project Schedule
Task:
9/1
9/8
Week
9/15 9/22 9/29 10/6 10/13 10/20 10/27 11/3 11/10 11/17 11/24 12/1
Project Overviews
Team Organization
Develop Project Plan
Implement Project Plan:
Improve, Test, Debug spreadsheet
Milestone: workable design tool
Translate spreadsheet (into Spanish)
Gather background information on
Honduras and water supply in less
developed countries
Incorporate EPANET into spreadsheet
Purchase GPS and incorporate its data
into spreadsheet
Plan Group Trip to Honduras
Written Work:
Proposal
Milestone: Proposal Due
End of Semester Report
Milestone: End of Semester Report Due
Key:
Scheduled duration
Float
Milestone
Information gathering, project planning began on September 15, 2003 and is projected to be
completed after three weeks on September 29, 2003. Implementation of the project is projected
to take twelve weeks commencing on September 15, 2003 and finishing on December 1, 2003.
The planning of the group trip to Honduras is projected to take the six weeks. The entire project
is projected to span fourteen weeks, being completed during the week of December 1, 2003. At
the end of these weeks our goal is to have produced a design tool that is ready to use and take to
Honduras to give to our partner organization Agua Para el Pueblo.
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TEAM ORGANIZATION
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RESOURCES AND NEEDS
The group already has access to Microsoft Excel, EPANET, and Cornell University library and
computing facilities. Dr. Monroe Weber-Shirk also serves as a source of expertise in water
supply engineering. A brief outline of the estimated semester project expenses for which we are
seeking funding is given below.
Survey Equipment

Handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) Device
(Garmin Etrex Vista)
$321.41

Precision altimeter
(American Paulin-Micro surveying Altimeter
$1,075.00
Honduras Trip (tentatively 1/14/04-1/23/04)

Plane flights
$720.00 x 8

Food, lodging, and in-country transportation
$210.00 x 8

Suggested vaccinations (Typhoid, Influenza, Hep A)
$103.00 x 8

Instructional materials (posters, visual aids, writing materials)
$20.00
Miscellaneous

Unforeseen expenditures
$200.00
_________
Project Total
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$9,880.41
REFERENCES
Dinar, A., M.W. Rosegrant, and R.S. Meinzen-Dick, Water Allocation Mechanisms-Principles
and Examples. 1997, The World Bank: Oxford.
Trevett, A.F. “The Community’s Need for External Support.” Paper presented at the Community
Water and Sanitation Conference, May 5-8, 1998, The World Bank, Washington, DC.
Trevett A.F. The SANAA technician in operation and maintenance program in Honduras, 2001.
<http://www.ehproject.org/PDF/Strategic_Papers/LACDEC/Honduras_TOM.pdf>
The World Bank, Entering the 21st Century: The Changing Development Landscape. 1999, The
World Bank: Oxford.
World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP). The World Water Development Report: Water
for People, Water for Life. 2003, UNESCO Publishing: France.
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TEAM BACKGROUND
Christopher Daniel Andrew Boone is a senior in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell
University. He has taken a variety of courses in Environmental Engineering, including a course
in fluid mechanics and a design course utilizing EPANET.
Peter Burns is a junior in Computer Science in the College of Engineering at Cornell
University. He has a great deal of programming experience acquired from coursework in his
major. He also has taken a number of Environmental Engineering courses utilizing Microsoft
Excel and EPANET such as Environmental Quality Engineering and Water Supply Engineering.
Amy Grove is a senior in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department. She has taken
several classes in water resources including: Hydraulic Engineering, Water Distribution Systems,
and Water Quality Engineering. She has interned at New York State Gas & Electric working
with the gas corrosion technician and worked at Louisiana State University researching Reactive
Barrier in Contaminated River Sediment Systems.
Andrea Gruber is a sophomore in the school of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She has
taken CEE 113, an introduction to environmental engineering and is currently enrolled in EAS
201, an overview of the physics and chemistry of the earth. She is continuing research she began
during the 2003 spring semester in rapid sand filters under the direction of Dr. Monroe WeberShirk. During the summer of 2003, she completed a month-long course at the Biosphere 2
Center in Arizona under the direction of Columbia University, where she gained knowledge in
environmental management and GPS technology.
Dale Meck is a senior in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. His
expertise is derived from courses taken in fluid mechanics, hydraulic engineering, hydrology,
watershed engineering, and computer science courses. Through participation in a Casas Por
Cristo trip to Mexico, he has also had some experience working in developing countries. He
intends to study water resources in arid regions in graduate school next fall.
Kendra Skopp is a senior majoring in Civil and Environmental Engineering, following the
Environmental Option. Relevant courses taken include fluid mechanics, water supply, water
quality, and hydraulic engineering. Next year, Kendra plans to get a job working with an
environmental consulting company.
Sima Thakkar is a second year graduate student in City and Regional Planning. Her areas of
concentrations include international development, community participation, gender studies,
water systems, and economic development.
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