Project Overview
In September 2016, Global Brigades completed a new water system in the community of La Corneta in collaboration with local a NGO, AVODEC. This system provides clean water to 394 beneficiaries.
La Corneta, Nicaragua
Prior to Global Brigades involvement, La Corneta had two main public wells being used by the community members. One well required community members, typically women and children, to walk to receive water. This meant carrying buckets, many times over long distances, to have water daily. Additionally, the quality of the water was often not adequate for drinking.
Later in 2013, the local municipality added a distribution line and a storage tank to one of the wells to bring water directly to the community members homes. However, three months after completing the project, problems related to the water flow to most of the houses occurred due to an improper location of the well and the onset of a drought. Ultimately, the water flow was not strong enough to reach approximately 65% of the homes.
Water System Solution
In February 2016, a partnership between La Corneta, Global Brigades Nicaragua, the Municipality of Sebaco, and AVODEC was officially formed. In order to plan a water system custom-designed for La Corneta, the land was first surveyed by a contracted AVODEC technician. When the technician asked La Corneta community members about other potentially usable water sources, members of the community pointed to another well dug twenty years ago, that by accident, had been obstructed by a rock, leaving the community members without further use.
With this information and the land survey taken into consideration, it was determined that the best fit for La Corneta would be to first clear the well of the obstruction and then build off of it a submersible electric pump and storage tank. The submersible electric pump was deemed necessary to pump water to houses at higher elevations, however, La Corneta did not have electricity at the time. Instead of letting that stop La Corneta from receiving water, community learders marched to the mayor’s office and negotiated for electricity to be brought to La Corneta, in order to install the electric portion of the water system. The system was then connected to the distribution network of the original system constructed by the municipal government back in 2013. The community financially supported with 12% of the funding, the Municipality of Sebaco with 11%, AVODEC with 13%, and Global Brigades with 61%.
Outside of these funds, it should be recognized that land was donated by two community members for the storage tank and water source and that community members helped as well contributing labor for construction. In addition to construction, La Corneta mobilized to form a CAPS (Comité de Agua Potable y Sanitación/ Water and Sanitation Committee). Over the course of four months of construction, 994 Global Brigades volunteers worked alongside the committee and community members to construct a system that now reaches 83 families and 394 beneficiaries.
Before the project’s completion, a capacity test of the well was completed and demonstrated an average of 29.3 gallons per minute. The celebration of this system’s water inauguration was September 13th, 2016.
Water Project Stages
All stages of this water project have been completed.