The Rotary Club of Lake Atitlan (RCLA) and Agua del Pueblo are helping the Community of Vista Hermosa to rehabilitate its potable water system. The project will also provide sanitation to the regional school in Vista Hermosa. Lydia Hohman of the Rotary Club of Annapolis MD visited the project in 2021. Lydia is currently helping her club and district evaluate the project for financial assistance.
Representatives of Vista Hermosa contacted Agua del Pueblo (AdP) in 2021 asking for advice. The RoCLA has been working with AdP as part of the “Save the Lake” project. The ultimate goal of the Save the Lake program is to provide water and sanitation to every rural community in the watershed of Lake Atitlan. RCLA has already helped six communities construct their water and sanitation systems.
AdP engineers and social workers visited the site on June 25, 2021. The social workers performed a preliminary Community Assessment. Over the past decade, the residents only receive water a few hours a day. The engineers completed a preliminary design. A spring supplies the water that is piped into the community. The spring is only sufficient for four families. Other families carry water from hand-dug wells.
The community will take the lead on the project and provide all of the unskilled labor. In three other RCLA projects, the municipality of Santa Lucia provided skilled labor and materials. The community is confident that the municipality will help financially and obtain the appropriate rights of way.
The project will include a new well with a submersible pump to extract water from the underlying aquifer. The community has also committed to providing sanitation facilities to every resident. The community will build “mini-wastewater treatment plants” to treat the waste from groups of five families. The project will also provide water meters for each household and a mini-wastewater treatment for the Regional School. The community is asking for $30,000 to complete the project designed by AdP.
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