More About the Adventure

(also originally posted on November 30th, 2014)

The project is located on the Caribbean coast of Panama near its western border with Costa Rica. It is located in the Bocas de Toro province and is the village of Sandubidi on Isla de Popa. Here is an aerial of tthe village. As the coordinates are visible on the map here, I recommend you check it out yourselves on GoogleEarth to get a better sense of where it is. The village itself has a population of 350 of which 100 are school age children. In terms of water, the village is served by a number of shallow wells contaminated by both surface runoff (ie, sewage, coliform bacteria) as well a possibly arsenic. A number of different options for securing clean water were looked at (prior to my participation with the group) including new wells, a 5 km overland aqueduct or a rainwater catchment and storage system. The latter proved most feasible and will be coupled to a series of point-of-use sand filters. More later.