Students help bring water to Peruvian village

Adam Bazar (left) and Jessica George (right) are among the four students from the UTSA chapter of Engineers Without Borders who traveled to central Peru for 12 days in January to build a comprehensive water delivery system to bring water to town residents as part of a multi-year community development project. less Adam Bazar (left) and Jessica George (right) are among the four students from the UTSA chapter of Engineers Without Borders who traveled to central Peru for 12 days in January to build a comprehensive water ... more Photo: Eleazar Hernandez Photo: Eleazar Hernandez Image 1 of / 11 Caption Close Students help bring water to Peruvian village 1 / 11 Back to Gallery

A handful of University of Texas at San Antonio engineering students and a faculty member spent the first two weeks of January developing a water system to serve an impoverished area of Peru.

They prepared a well site and installed pipeline from the well to a roadway. But the group, UTSA's Engineers Without Borders chapter, needs to raise about $15,000 to return this summer and install the pump.

In the remote, earthquake-wracked Peruvian village, finding water is a struggle.

Residents tap into an agricultural company's irrigation system, but that's cut off on weekends. Aid workers say the company could start pumping chemical fertilizer into the water, which primarily is used to grow avocados, sweet potatoes and other crops.

The 500 or so Viña Vieja residents sometimes fetch buckets from a nearby river, though some have been swept away in its currents or fallen ill after drinking from it.

Students and engineering assistant professor Heather Shipley said football game tailgate fundraisers and departmental money helped finance the recent trip.

Once completed, their multi-year project would provide running water to homes for the first time, said Iliana Diaz of Texas Partners of the Americas, a nonprofit that helped the students and has worked in Viña Vieja since a powerful 2007 quake damaged it.

“The people are very grateful,” Diaz said. “They're counting on them. That's their only hope.”

Students said the earthquake damage is still obvious.

“If you go up some of the hills ... you can tell all the roofs collapsed on virtually every building,” said civil engineering senior Steven Byers, 27. “What they do is put straw roofs up or tarps or try to use sheet metal.”

Others weave walls and roofs from banana leaves, said civil engineering senior Diego Gonzalez.

Though the nonprofit has rebuilt a school, a library and a dining hall, and others from area universities have worked on health projects there, it's a challenge to get much more done without water, Diaz said.

When the UTSA project is finished, Gonzalez, 23, said students will teach community members, who have homes clustered along a five-mile stretch of road, how to maintain the system.

The students said they also enjoyed applying knowledge learned in the classroom to humanitarian ends.

“Not only do we get to work on the design of it, we also get to go down there and see it get put into place,” said civil engineering senior Adam Bazar, 22. “So much of what we learn in school is all design-oriented. You never see anything come out of it besides what you put on paper.”

Gonzalez said residents taught them to mix concrete without the typical machinery. They adapted the project to its earthquake-prone location by installing a gravel foundation that could absorb shock waves.

Gonzalez and civil engineering major Jessica George, 21, said they were especially touched by the children.

“You see the future of that community and the generations to come,” George said. “Seeing us, I think, inspired them perhaps, too. There's a world out there, and the world wants to help them.”