Internships

Alex Byrnes ’18

This summer, our travel team spent 17 days in the Dominican Republic carrying out an assessment of our partner community, El Cajuil. The primary activities undertaken included water testing, mapping of the pipeline, and conducting a community wide census. We conducted laboratory biological and home chemical testing throughout the existing water system and found that the only health risk present was fecal coliform. The existing pipeline was mapped with the use of a handheld GPS and a GPS station. With the help of the community, we were able to locate a secondary source, a mountainous spring which could add water to the system, and to map a pipeline from the source to the existing pipeline. Our final task was a community census. We went house to house, conducting a survey regarding household demographics and water use patterns. Through this we were able to determine roughly how much water the community needs, how many people are in the community, and how much growth is to be expected in the coming years. Next year, our team will begin designing multiple additions to the system.