Peru Water Project

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The village of Llakamate, Peru.  The picture is taken near the Lieutenant Governor's house, looking northeast along the river valley.

Village water committee confer

 Rotary International has recognized and focused on the importance of plentiful, available, sanitary water supply for any remote community.  In response to this focus, the Aurora Rotary Club in cooperation with other clubs is participating in providing water for San Leon and LLakamate, Peru.  San Leon is a community of 150 people in northern Peru, District of Chao, Province of Viru.

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Beginning in 2009, Aurora Rotary Club, in partnership with 8 other Colorado Rotary Clubs, Trujillo Sur Rotary Club (District 4460), and the University of Colorado Chapter of Engineers Without Borders will begin construction of a water project to bring clean water to the small village of Llakamate, in Peru (photo=Figure 1).  Presently the 200 people of Llakamate get their drinking and cooking water from occasional diversions of polluted river water which is known to contain coliforms, producing significant health risks, particularly to children of the community.  This project follows-on with similar Rotary/EWB partnerships (2004-2008) that had huge success with bringing fresh water to the village of San Leon (map=Figure 2), in the same (Viru) Province of coastal Peru.

Our team, coordinating with the provincial municipality of Chao will begin construction of a spring-catchment structure to collect water from the perennial spring, and pipe the water 3km to a new reservoir site near the village.  There we will build a small concrete-block reservoir to contain water for state-of-the-art purification, and then build a distribution system 4 km to village homes and the school.  The village elders having formed an enthusiastic local water community will provide the labor for burying the pipelines and building the reservoir (map=Figure 3), with technical assistance from the EWB graduate students and the municipality.  During the term of this two-year project, we are hopeful that several Rotarians from the Colorado supporting Clubs will be able to travel to Peru and get their hands dirty assisting with the project.  With this undertaking, we intend our members to get to know the people of Llakamate one-on-one, and help them to take possession of their own water system, and their future.

For detailed information on this project, members and website visitors may contact Jim Rogers at jim_rogers1@comcast.net