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March 9, 2007 Vol. 77,
no. 8S
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| THINK GLOBAL: From left, CEE seniors Lauren Huey, Matt Vaggione, James Stuekerjuergen, Tim Roller and Ben Huie are researching better water systems for an arid village in Chile.
RACHEL SHAFER PHOTO
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From Berkeley to Chile with agua aid
CEE team studies ways to meet water needs in desert village
Paposo, a village located on the coast of Chile north
of the capital Santiago, hugs the edge of the Atacama Desert, the driest
desert on earth. In some inland spots, it has never rained (at least
since humans started measuring rainfall there). Coastal Paposo averages
less than half an inch of rain per year. Some years, it doesn’t
rain at all.
Lately, a group of CEE seniors has been thinking a lot about this place.
They’ve never been there, but they’re determined to help
solve its major problem: no reliable, low-cost water system.
Paposo’s 300 residents fish, herd goats, and harvest local edibles.
For water, they sometimes use a small spring, but mostly they truck
their water in from a larger town at great cost. Economic stability
is so unpredictable that villagers are leaving in search of better
lives elsewhere. Unless a viable water system and sustainable economic
opportunities turn up, this traditional desert community will disappear.
Although located thousands of miles and worlds away from campus, Paposo
shares one thing in common with Berkeley: coastal fog. The Chileans
call their dense version camanchaca, and a group of Berkeley students
is studying whether collecting the camanchaca will provide enough water
to make this arid community livable.
Ben Huie, Lauren Huey, Tim Roller, Matt Vaggione and James Stuekerjuer-gen
have taken on Paposo’s problem as their capstone project in Professor
Robert Bea’s CEE 180 “Engineered Systems” class.
Their goal is to analyze the feasibility of alternative water sources,
such as fog, and propose economic options that would entice villagers
to stay.
The team, which is advised by engineers at Arup, a global engineering
firm with consulting ties to Chile, first heard of Paposo’s problem
through CEE alum Manish Dalia (B.S.’05 CEE), an engineer at Arup.
Dalia learned of the project from two colleagues and put them in touch
with Professor Bea and the CEE 180 students.
Now the civies are hard at work on a feasibility study. “We’re
taking a systems approach,” Huey explains. “We’re
looking at both the technical and human factors and how they may affect
one another.” The team has researched different fog harvesting
technologies as well as groundwater and desalinization systems.
One challenge has been defining the boundaries of the Paposo problem,
but the major hurdle, everyone agrees, is the simple fact they can’t
be in Chile to conduct field research. The students are hoping to spend
spring break there and are currently working to raise the $5,000-plus
needed to fly to Santiago. (If you’re interested in donating,
go to http://bigideas.berkeley.edu/node/127.)
“Thinking about all the things we have to take into account for the study
is a little overwhelming,” says Vaggione. “There’s also some
risk to the decisions we’ll be making, but it feels good to be doing something
real that will improve people’s lives.”
Learn more about the project at http://bigideas.berkeley.edu.
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