In mid-November 2014, Carsten Floess — a geotechnical engineer with ArchTam and an adjunct professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York — sent out an email requesting volunteer travel mentors for the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) chapter at RPI.

The project required the installation of a rainwater collection system on Isla Popa, a remote island in the Caribbean off the coast of Panama. The exotic location and timing of the trip — early January 2015, a mere eight weeks from when the email was sent — caught my attention. Having installed water systems in Zimbabwe and Haiti over the past several years for humanitarian groups, the idea of volunteering for this project resonated with me. After getting approval from my wife and kids and buy-in from the RPI EWB board, I was committed. I knew no one from the organization and very little about the project, but for me, this was great. Usually, I was the one planning and organizing these projects, so to stand back and act as a technical resource was fantastic.

The students from RPI had been spending years planning this project. During three trips in as many years, they had gained the information they needed to install the system on the roof of one of the pavilions on the island’s small school. We met three times prior to the trip to get to know each other and for me to gain an understanding of the project. On paper, everything looked good, and everyone was excited.

RPI’s EWB team at the project site on Isla Popa, Panama (From left: Front row — Jesse Freitas and Anna Thonis. Back row — Ambar Mena, Tom Rebbecchi, Mike Kubista, Scott Underhill, Kyle Geisler and Paul Pagnozzi).

We arrived on the Isla Popa on a Tuesday afternoon with a barge full of sand, cement, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe and two 600-gallon storage tanks. These materials were essential to the project, but weren’t available on the island, so we had to plan months in advance to purchase them on Isla Boca, the nearest island in Panama with a supply store. Once we purchased the materials, it took us three hours to transport them by barge to the island, where the community greeted us at the dock and carried all of the supplies up to the school — a good quarter mile up a hill. Over the next five days, we worked in intense sun and then rain, watching our work area transition from grass to mud. By the last day, as the tank was installed and the rain gutters put in place, we were covered in mud. And in the rain, we saw the first flush system get filled and then overflow into the collection tank, we were overjoyed! Job completed. No lessons learned? Hardly.

The students learned that materials in the U.S. are not the same quality as the materials in remote areas. When you have to drill pilot holes (small holes drilled before driving a screw into a piece of wood) to drive nails in, you know you are dealing with tough wood.

My favorite experience was watching a senior at RPI, who designed the PVC collection gutters, become frustrated because the PVC pipe was neither schedule 40 (pipe wall thickness measurement) nor fitting properly. Finally, he came to me and said, “What should I do?” I looked over to the four local hired helpers watching and said, “Ask them.” Within a few hours, we all stood back to see the gutters securely in place.

ArchTam’s Scott Underhill stands in front of the newly installed rainwater collection system (first flush piping to the left).

Everyone on the trip learned so much. Many Americans don’t even know where their water comes from, but all of the people on the Isla Popa do. For them, water comes from a storage tank.

If you have any questions or comments about my experience in Isla Popa or my involvement with Engineers Without Borders, please leave a comment below. Feel free to also share your EWB and international volunteer experiences as well.

Scott Underhill is a registered professional engineer in New York, and has 23 years of experience in the environmental remediation field. He is currently the program manager of ArchTam’s New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s standby engineering contract.
LinkedIn: Scott Underhill

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As a resident of San Francisco, earthquake risk is a reality that I am always aware of. Although ground shaking will cause damage, fires following an earthquake are just as problematic. After the 1906 earthquake devastated the city, the fires that followed were the worst in the history of the United States. As a result, San Francisco built a separate water system, the Auxiliary Water Supply System (AWSS), specifically to fight large conflagrations.

The system includes a reservoir and two tanks, and the original network used extra-thick pipe. Two pump stations along the coast can also feed the system with water from the bay, and underground cisterns dot the city as standalone water sources. Due to the age and the limited coverage of the AWSS, ArchTam was selected to perform a capital-planning study on how to improve and potentially expand the system. My involvement focused primarily on the hydraulic and reliability-modeling aspects of the project, which utilized probabilistic methods to evaluate system performance and the proposed improvement projects.

The biggest challenge was to determine the best way to represent and test the system with the information available to us. This process required our team to work closely with reliability and seismic-modeling experts, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), and other stakeholders, such as the San Francisco Fire Department, to create a methodology that was defensible and useful to determine future capital improvements. Ultimately, we had to create new processes and tools to help the SFPUC make the decisions needed for improving the AWSS. It is absolutely gratifying to see some of our recommendations being built right now in the city. Next time you are in San Francisco and you notice two different fire hydrants or brick rings in the streets, you’ll know that it’s the AWSS, ready to put out fires when “the big one” hits.

While not running hydraulic models, I am also involved in working on sustainability for infrastructure projects. There is a new sustainability framework and rating system called Envision, which is meant to be used on a broader range of infrastructure types such as pipelines, roadways, parks, etc. Right now, I am serving as the sustainability manager using Envision for a wastewater treatment plant upgrade project for the City of Davis in California. My role is to work closely with the design team to ensure that the design elements and construction processes follow the sustainability metrics prescribed in the Envision system. Our goal is to make sure that the work we do aligns with the sustainability targets for the city. This project is exciting because Envision is fairly new, and the work we are doing can set precedents for similar projects in the future.

Outside of the office, I volunteer with the San Francisco Professionals Chapter of Engineers Without Borders – USA. You can read about my recent trip to Fiji on my previous blog post on the ArchTam Impact blog. Our team is currently planning our next implementation trip this summer to build a new 20,000-liter reinforced concrete water storage tank for one of the villages, and I am excited to continue working to bring clean and reliable water to three villages in rural Fiji.

Check out Aaron’s video of his work below:

Aaron Lee (Aaron.Lee@archtam.com) is a civil engineer with ArchTam’s water business unit in the San Francisco office.
LinkedIn: Aaron Lee, P.E.

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At location after location, we started drilling hopefully.  Inch by inch, we advanced the auger — one meter down, one and a half meters down, two meters down — only to have our efforts grind to a halt as we encountered layers of impenetrable volcanic rock.  As the faces of the non-locals in our group grew long with frustration, our Maasai hosts continued to laugh and sing as they strained to turn the augers into the stiff soil only to be rebuffed yet again.  What those of us — who had traveled thousands of miles to this water-strapped landscape in southern Kenya — saw as a series of failures that morning, our local friends saw for what it truly was: opportunity.

The 15,000 Maasai, who call the Kuku Group Ranch home, are facing a monumental water supply crisis.  The ranch is situated between the Kilimanjaro massif to the south in Tanzania and the southwestern slope of the Chyulu Hills, Hemingway’s “Green Hills of Africa,” to the north.  In the past, this landscape provided ample water for the Maasai population and its traditional pastoral lifestyle; however, rapid population growth in the local area and the urban centers of Nairobi and Mombasa, climate change, and the conversion of large areas of land from pastoral or undeveloped use to agriculture in recent years have led to a situation where the regional demand for water outstrips supply by nearly 25%.  This shortage has resulted in increased reliance on marginal sources and, consequently, increased rates of waterborne disease.  The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust (MWCT), which administers conservation areas throughout the ranch, reached out to ArchTam for support following such an outbreak in 2012 that claimed the lives of multiple children.

A key finding of ArchTam’s initial visit in 2012 was that potable water sources, which often times are nothing more than pits dug by hand until the water table is reached, needed to be isolated from livestock and wildlife.  Our trip, an early example of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) working with corporate partners, sought to act on this finding by installing small-diameter wells using hand-operated equipment and locally sourced materials.  ArchTam provided drilling equipment, training and materials for two wells to a group of Maasai community members identified by the MWCT.  Our drill crew provided what would be the most important requirements for the success of our pilot project: motivation, innovation, and local knowledge.

Our Maasai friends worked tirelessly and joyfully and were able to read the landscape for clues indicating a shallow water table such as the presence of water-loving Yellow Fever Acacia trees.  When our last section of well-casing snapped in half, and my colleagues and I scratched our heads as to how to repair it, the Maasai kindled a small fire and heated and perfectly flared a bell end in the pipe.  The Maasai community is no stranger to foreign aid.  The ranch is pocked with wells installed by non-governmental organizations that have gone dry or are constructed with pumps that are broken and cannot be repaired with local parts or require expensive diesel fuel to operate.  Where our project differed from many that came before was that we sought not to provide a finished product, but rather to provide equipment and the skills necessary to use it.  As our truck bounced north towards camp with the setting sun casting long shadows on the Chyulus on the evening of February 11, we grinned ear-to-ear having witnessed that afternoon the successful installation of the second microwell, but more importantly, a newly empowered community eager for the opportunity to face its challenges.

Matt Scharf, PE, is an environmental engineer who specializes in the assessment and remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater.  His other interests include water resources management, conservation, sustainable agriculture, backpacking and mountain biking.
LinkedIn: Matt Scharf

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Our team’s journey to Fiji began in 2009, following a large typhoid outbreak in the Buca Bay area in 2007. With support from our non-governmental organization contacts, we have successfully completed five project implementation trips in three villages: Buca, Loa, and Vunikura. Our projects consist of replacing and rehabilitating pipelines, building biosand filters to improve drinking water quality, and making water source improvements. This year’s trip focused on performing assessments and gathering information from the villages as we begin to embark on larger and more complicated projects upstream of the villages (including a new 20,000-liter concrete storage tank for Vunikura).

So what is it like working in rural Fiji, you may ask? We usually began our days early in the mornings and selected one or two of the villages to focus on for that day. Upon arrival to the village, we would seek out the Turaga Ni Koro (the elected headman of the village) or a member of the village water committee who would then gather villagers to help us with construction. Whether it was sieving sand for the biosand filters or replacing pipe segments, we would first demonstrate to the villagers what we would like to have done and then have them perform the work to foster knowledge transfer. Evenings were generally reserved for plating and analyzing water quality samples we routinely took, and for planning for the following day.

Towards the end of our trip, we had the great pleasure of taking part in some celebrations with the villages, which included food baked in a lovo (earthen oven), a meke (traditional dance/story telling), and lots of laughter and music. As one resident of Vunikura said to us, “The meke and food are all we have to give to you as a token of our gratitude.”

All in all, the trip was a success. We were able to accomplish the tasks we set out to do and identified the priorities and needs for subsequent trips. Our filters are operating as designed by removing at least 95% of total coliforms and E. coli. Some things I will never forget about Fiji are the unrelenting friendliness of the villagers and their sincere gratitude for the cleaner and more reliable water supply we could bring to them. In our last meeting with the Turaga Ni Koro of Loa, he said that the villagers no longer get sick from drinking their water. If that’s not a testament to our work, then I don’t know what is!  As we said our final “moce” (goodbye), I knew that I would be leaving with an experience I would never forget.

I highly recommend getting involved with organizations like EWB. Not only is it an opportunity to experience other cultures and to learn new skills, but it is also a great way to meet fellow engineers and non-engineers who are passionate about giving back. I am fortunate to be part of a company like ArchTam that supports great organizations such as EWB.

Aaron Lee (Aaron.Lee@archtam.com) is an engineer in ArchTam’s water business line and has been a member of EWB for three years.

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