Day in the life of a Village Water Supply Operator

Limones y Villadora

Week 3 in INTAG

Meet Anibal Pasquel. He is the man responsible for operating and maintaining the gravity-fed water supply that serves the two villages of Limones and Villadora. In this farming community there is a total of 34 connections, which includes a school and a restaurant marked with a hotel sign. Anibal lives with his wife Maria in a wooden house that he built himself, on a plot of land where everything is grown from beans and bannanas to pineapples and cotton.

Aside from his farming commitments, Anibal is responsible for responding to any problems in the system, making syure that water is flowing and of drinkable quality. His work includes making new connections, installing meetings, organising community work teams when repair work is required or responding to a halt in flow at any time of the day.

Over the last 2 weeks we've had the privelege of spending time with Anibal and Maria to understand how the system works, where problems lie and the ideas that they and the community have for improving the system.

6 AM: OFF THE BEATEN TRACK: HILLSIDE SOURCE

Our tour of the system began with an early morning rise to make the 2 1/2 hour hike up to the system's spring source, in the hills that surround the two communities. With machete in hadn Anibal hacks his way through the evergrowing vegetation to clear our path, which includes

some very sturdy sugar cane.

9 AM: SPRING CAPTURE

There are two spring captures that feed the system. The greater of the two begins at the base of a large rock wedged into the steep slopes. Under the base of the rock, water is channeled into two concrete chambers, aligned in series, each with wire mesh filters to catch debri or sediment. A perforated capped pipe leaves the second chamber to carry water down to the communities. Three years ago, a dry summer caused an extreme reduction in flow from this source, which led to the development of a second spring further up the hillside.

The second spring collects water that has already run above from for some 8m. As a result, in our visit we observed thick sediment lining the concrete collection tank. Maria soon got to work on draining and cleaning out the tank. This second spring delivers a quarter of the 0.4 l/s that enters the system from the two sources combined. Taking this measured flow rate of 0.4 l/s, over the period of 1 day, the sources provide 34,500 l. Without taking into account storage capacity and peak demands in the system, this would be sufficient to supply 47 households using 733 l/day. This suggests that the sources are sufficient to supply the two villages with its current population - but mroe study is required to understand the sytem's storage capacity and daily usage patterns to confirm this thinking.

10 AM: PIPELINE TO THE COMMUNITIES

A path follows the route of the pipeline as it descends its way down the hillside. A flexible 1" pipe (called "mangera") is in parts suspended above ground, fixed to bamboo stakes plugged into the ground. The majority of the pipeline is buried and runds along a ridge of a the hill towards the reservoir storage tank.

11 AM: CONTROL VALVES

Along the route of the pipeline break pressure tanks ("tanque rompe presiones") are used to bring the static head back to atmospheric pressure. This reduces the pressure in the pipeline, which enables the diameter of the pipe to be kept to a minimum.

At high points along the system, valves to release air ("valvulas de aire") are positioned, whilst at low points washout valves ("valvulos de desague") are located to allow cleaning of the pipeline. In the picture above, Anibal explains that at the moment the majority of the air-release valves are manually operated, and that they require automatic valves so that he needn't have to make the trek when there is air entrained in the system.

1 PM: CHLORINATION

A chlorine batching tank sits on top of the reservoir storage tank, but has not been used for many years and the equipment has become obsolete. The reason for this seems to be due to a number of factors; one being the distance of the reservoir storage tank from Anibal's house making the frequent dosing an overbearign commitmnet, and the concern that chlorinated water was being wasted through the storage tank's washout during hte night, onto the road below.

3 PM: MINGA: COMMUNITY WORKFORCE

The line that marks Limones from Villadora is the recently upgraded main road. There are break pressure tanks located either side of the road, with a drop of some 20m between the two. SInce the roads reconstruction, the flexible "mangera" passed under the road through a drainage conduit. This low point in this part of the system has led to problems of air entrapment in the pipe. As a result, the water committee whom are responsible for manaing the water system, known as the "Directiva de la Junta de Agua", called for a "minga", to install a concrete post to elevate the pipe above the road, with the aim of removing the low point in this part of the system.

The "convocatoria" as shown by Maria above, orders all users to attend to give assistance for any repair or maintenance work required, with a penalty of $10 payable for non-attendance.

8 PM: THE SYSTEM'S LIFELINE

From our time spent with Anibal we have learnt a tremendous amount about the challenges that face a gravity-fed system, both technically and socially. We have seen firsthand Anibal's tireless work that he puts into making sure the system is working.

As I ask Anibal what inspired him to take on this role, he tells me that he's "always fascinated to learn how things work, and to get them working at their best". He jokingly tells us he doesn't have much of a technical background, but we have seen that he has the mind, the care and the attention to solve any problems that come his way. His attention to detail was demonstrated to us through his careful drawings of the system, with each house labelled by name.

At the end of a long day attending to the upkeep of the system, we are greeted by Maria who has lovingly prepared a hot nourishing soup of platano and potato grown on on their land, together with a warming soya milk. They call this valley paradise, with its abundant produce of food, and from my time here I can see why.