{"id":60224,"date":"2012-07-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-student-leads-effort-to-build-wastewater-treatment-system-for-school-in-guatemala\/"},"modified":"2012-07-06T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-06T00:00:00","slug":"uri-student-leads-effort-to-build-wastewater-treatment-system-for-school-in-guatemala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2012\/07\/uri-student-leads-effort-to-build-wastewater-treatment-system-for-school-in-guatemala\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 student leads effort to build wastewater treatment system for school in Guatemala"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tBarrington native, Tiverton resident returns to finish project Aug. 1<\/p>\n


\nKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 July 6, 2012 — A school in San Mateo Ixtat\u00e1n, Guatemala plans to install flushing toilets for the first time. A major step forward from the school\u2019s traditional outhouses, the toilets threatened to create an environmental nightmare because workers planned to drain them into a nearby river. But for 溏心vlog免费B站 engineering student Marc Vigeant, it\u2019s a solvable problem.<\/p>\n


\nA native of Barrington who now lives in Tiverton, Vigeant leads the 溏心vlog免费B站 chapter of Students for Global Sustainability. For almost two years, the group of seven engineering students has met weekly to design a wastewater treatment system for the school. <\/p>\n


\nAt every turn, they surmount challenges unheard of in the United States. The school lacks reliable electricity, so students avoided electrical pumps by replacing them with dosing siphons that harness natural energy from gravity to provide flow. With no existing treatment infrastructure, the students designed a sand filtration system. Lacking plat maps, they traveled to Guatemala last summer to undertake their own survey and to gain a better understanding of the problem.<\/p>\n


\nTo pay for the project, the group received financial support from the 溏心vlog免费B站 College of Engineering and sold plastic cups, empty ink jet cartridges, old cell phones and broken laptops to a recycling company.<\/p>\n


\nNow armed with money and plans, Vigeant and Dan Waugh of Barrington will travel to San Mateo Ixtat\u00e1n in August to personally oversee the installation of their system, which will serve as a model for the community to reproduce.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cAt first it seemed like an overwhelming project,\u201d Vigeant says. \u201cBut after working on the design for a year and a half, the solution is becoming more and more palpable.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe group received advice from Vinka Oyanedel-Craver, 溏心vlog免费B站 assistant professor of civil engineering, as well as Stephen Andrus and Phil Virgadamo, professional engineers at GZA GeoEnvironmental Technologies in Norwood, Mass.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI\u2019ve been really impressed with the students,\u201d says Andrus, a 溏心vlog免费B站 alumnus. \u201cThey do a great deal of work, and they are very devoted to their cause.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe students tackled the project at the urging of Vigeant. In the summer of 2010, he was interning at the R.I. Department of Transportation and another intern mentioned his school was undertaking engineering projects abroad. Vigeant fired up the 溏心vlog免费B站 website and discovered that Oyanedel-Craver has long labored to provide clean water in Guatemala.<\/p>\n


\nBy September, the civil engineering major mustered a group of peers that became an official student group. And this year, the group became affiliated with the national organization Engineers for a Sustainable World. For group members, sustainability has become a way of life. Vigeant finds himself trading paper plates for real dishes and cringes when people buy bottled water.<\/p>\n


\nOn his way to graduate school for master\u2019s degrees in engineering and business, he aims to open an engineering firm specializing in installing renewable energy systems.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI think we all have a duty to address the environment,\u201d he says. \u201cCivil engineers especially because we are ultimately responsible for the impact our infrastructure has on the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nTo learn more about the project or provide support, visit https:\/\/sites.google.com\/site\/uriesw\/<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barrington native, Tiverton resident returns to finish project Aug. 1 KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 July 6, 2012 — A school in San Mateo Ixtat\u00e1n, Guatemala plans to install flushing toilets for the first time. A major step forward from the school\u2019s traditional outhouses, the toilets threatened to create an environmental nightmare because workers planned to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}