A GROUNDWATER STUDY IN COLINAS DE SUIZA, VILLANUEVA, HONDURAS

The Colorado School of Mines received a 2005 Engineering Award through the Mondialogo Program, cosponsored by UNESCO and Daimler-Chrysler. The program has succeeded in bringing<br>together engineering student design teams from developed countries with their counterparts in developing countries. CSM has partnered with Universidad Tecnologico Centroamericana, a small private engineering school located in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. For the last two years, multidisciplinary teams of engineering students have worked with a small village in desperate need, Colonia Suiza, near Villanueva, Honduras. The results of the 2004-5 effort included preliminary development of a design for the potable water pump, storage, treatment and distribution system. Also, included was an initial design for a waste treatment wetlands system. The 2005-6 project requires further design and cost estimation for a Water Treatment and Distribution facility for the village. The first step in this phase was to characterize the groundwater available for the village. Dipole-Dipole Resistivity soundings were carried out near the village to map the depth to water table, its thickness, and the extent of the resource. The data were calibrated with a nearby well that is 80 meters in depth. These data will enable the team to better design a system to fill the water needs of the area.