C-S Engineer Leads Volunteer Team to Assist Dominican Republic Village in Constructing New Water System

Update: Manantiales Water System is Up and Running! A Manantiales elder reaches into the stream of the first running water to reach his home since construction was completed on a new water system for the rural Dominican Republic village. The new system was turned on in early March, bringing water for drinking, cooking and irrigating farmland to the small community which, for more than 10 years, has been seeking assistance to bring safe water from the mountains to their village more than 5 kilometers away.

The Village of Manantiales, Dominican Republic, is on the verge of a new era, after a team of seven Wisconsin professionals led by Crispell-Snyder engineer Ann-Perry Witmer traveled there in early January to help construct a new water system. The group, a loosely affiliated team of friends from throughout the region, worked closely with the Community of St. Paul to design and construct nearly 6 kilometers of water transmission main, a 6,000 liter distribution tank, a farmland irrigation system, a spring catchment/sedimentation box and a ferrocement cover for an abandoned 35,000 gallon reservoir. The Community of St. Paul is a mission associated with the Catholic Diocese of Milwaukee, and CSP member Michael Wolfe of Waukesha acted as on-the-ground coordinator for the project in the D.R.

More than two dozen village residents mobilized during the one-week construction trip January 2-10 to dig trenches for pipe, tie reinforcing steel, mix cement mortar and traverse rugged terrain to install new pipeline. When the final construction tasks are completed later this month, the village will have a reliable water supply capable of delivering irrigation water to several hundred acres of arid farmland, providing safe drinking water directly to the 22 homes of the community, and delivering more than 50 gallons per minute of spring water down the mountainside to Manantiales. At the same time, community members learned new construction trades, and professional masons in the region trained with the team to apply unfamiliar techniques such as ferrocement construction to future projects.

This is Witmer’s fifth service project working in partnership with communities-in-need to provide sanitary water supply. Previous projects have been located in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Later this month, Witmer will travel to Africa to work with an Engineers Without Borders group from the University of Illinois that is constructing a community water system in Adu Achi, Nigeria.

Major project funders are: Diputación de Soria and Collegi d’Enginyers de Camins, Canals i Ports de Catalunya (College of Engineers of Roads, Canals and Ports of Cataluña).

Manantiales laborers begin constructing the skeleton of a ferrocement cover for an existing 35,000 gallon reservoir that they’ve been unable to use. The 30-foot-diameter open tank was covered to protect the new water supply and provide storage for irrigation use in the village’s agricultural fields.	Community of St. Paul Missionary Mike Wolfe of Waukesha clears away to rudimentary spring-capture pipe previously used by Manatiales for their water supply. Removal of the existing system and construction of a covered spring catchment box provided a safer, more reliable supply for the Dominican Republic community.
The reservoir cover takes shape, using reinforcing bars tied to steel pipe and plates. Village laborers working on this phase of the project learned a new trade in tying rebar and laying cement mortar.	Crispell-Snyder engineer Ann-Perry Witmer sets one of two roof hatches in the reservoir, while ever-curious local children look on.
A bucket brigade at the reservoir conveys a steady supply of freshly mixed cement mortar (blended on the ground with shovels, foreground), under threatening skies.	Nearly 6 km of PVC and steel pipe was laid through unforgiving terrain as part of this project. PVC pipe from the existing water system, on right, is severely degraded due to UV exposure. The new PVC pipeline, on the left, will be buried in trench that has been dug by the village.
Trench crews in the village prepare to lay pipe for the distribution system. This construction project marks the first time the residents of Manantiales will have water piped directly to their properties.	Travel team members from Wisconsin teamed with Manantiales residents and Dominican Republic masons to build a ferrocement water tank. This formless cement-mortar construction technique is uncommon in the Dominican Republic, and local tradesmen participated in the process with the hope of applying this economical process to other projects.
The distribution tank at the village’s edge is nearly complete, with the exception of a hatch that had not yet been installed and the installation of an adjacent chlorination unit to disinfect drinking water. The tank was inscribed in memory of Ernesto de la Roza, the village elder who sought to bring safe water to his community for more than a decade.	At a celebration upon completion of the project, Witmer embraces the organizer of the village effort, the daughter of a village elder whose vision of readily available water for Manantiales was carried on by his family after his death several years ago.