UCF Student Engineers Working to Bring Clean Water to Haitian Community

By Chad Binette Dec. 22, 2008

Photo: Courtesy of UCF Engineers Without Borders

A young Haitian girl collects water from the contaminated mountain spring that is a three-hour walk from her community.

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A three-mile trek over rocky terrain takes about 10,000 residents of Mare Brignole, Haiti, to their closest supply of water – a contaminated mountain spring. 

Students in the University of Central Florida’s Engineers Without Borders chapter plan to end that ordeal by developing a more reliable clean source of water for the community. They visited Mare Brignole last week to meet with residents and assess the community’s needs, and now they will begin designing and raising money for a cistern-based system to provide clean water.

“It took us about three hours to walk to the spring where they get water, and I could barely walk the next day,” said James Crawford, an Environmental Engineering major from Fort Lauderdale and the president of UCF Engineers Without Borders. “Carrying a five-gallon bucket of water, it takes six or seven hours, and it’s mostly women and children who get the water. They walk miles and miles all over the place just to bring water to their houses.”

The students plan to build a water catchment system that will take water from the roofs of two community buildings and store it in oversized cisterns. That will be most beneficial in the dry season, from January to March, when five communities with 25,000 residents share the small, contaminated mountain spring. A basic filtration and disinfection system also will be installed. The construction of the systems will be performed by a local Haitian contractor using workers from Mare Brignol. The students hope to return to Haiti to supervise and assist in constructing the systems in late spring or summer. The project will also include the construction of composting latrines, as well as educational initiatives for the improvement of health and hygiene. An important objective of the project to keep the systems simple so residents can operate and maintain them after the students leave.

The project is the first international venture for UCF’s Engineers Without Borders chapter. The students chose the Haiti project because they wanted to help a country that is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and that has a large immigrant population in Central Florida. 

The students stayed in a church near Mare Brignole in southeast Haiti. They met with the local water committees of Mare Brignol and an adjacent community, Calumette, and they performed a health assessment with a local nurse in Mare Brignol.

“We can directly help people in Haiti and affect their lives,” Crawford said. “This also gives us an opportunity to work in a real-life situation. We have a problem, we have to fix it, and we have to learn how to fund raise, research and network with other people – it’s a lot more than engineering.”

The project was initiated by Bruce Goddard, a semi-retired engineer who has worked on development projects in Haiti for more than ten years. Goddard is vice president of the Georgia-based Health Education Relief Organization, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the children of Haiti. HERO was established in 2003 to build schools, medical clinics and water and sanitation systems in Haiti.

Goddard said the lack of clean water is endemic throughout Haiti, and much of that water supply dries up from January through March. The contaminated water causes diarrhea, intestinal parasites and other health problems that cause many Haitian children to die at a young age.

The UCF project is one of three that Goddard is working on with Engineers Without Borders in Haiti. The others are with the Missouri University of Science and Technology and the Atlanta professional chapter of Engineers Without Borders.

“I really enjoy working with the student chapters and seeing these students grasp the concept of reaching out and helping the less fortunate,” he said. “We are providing hope to the people in the countries that we’re working in. The people of Haiti know that someone cares about them.”

William “Billy” Marshall, an Orlando-based professional engineer with AECOM Water, also is supporting and mentoring the students. AECOM Water is funding the project, and its employees and students on the project team donated and delivered approximately $1,200 worth of medical supplies and antibiotics, children's clothing and sports equipment.

"The provision of clean water enables the six to seven hours otherwise spent gathering water to be utilized for educational and economic activities,” Marshall said. “Clean water and the provision of adequate sanitation is one of the basic tenets of a successful and healthy community."

The UCF engineering students previously have volunteered with several local community service projects, such as building homes with Habitat for Humanity. They hope to recruit more UCF students – engineering and non-engineering majors – to help with the Haiti venture. Non-engineering majors can help with tasks such as fund raising, research and educational and health initiatives.

In addition to Crawford, the UCF Engineers Without Borders students who traveled to Haiti are Vice President Tina Hierholzer, a Computer Science major from Pace, Fla.; Treasurer Anna Pepper, a Civil Engineering major from Denver; and Secretary Katherine Moore, a Civil and Environmental Engineering major from Lake Panasoffkee, Fla.

For more information on UCF Engineers Without Borders, visit www.ewbucf.org. For more information on the Health Education Relief Organization, go to www.herononprofit.org.

UCF Stands For Opportunity: The University of Central Florida is a metropolitan research university that ranks as the 6th largest in the nation with more than 50,000 students. UCF's first classes were offered in 1968. The university offers impressive academic and research environments that power the region's economic development. UCF's culture of opportunity is driven by our diversity, Orlando environment, history of entrepreneurship and our youth, relevance and energy. For more information, visit http://news.ucf.edu. 

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