This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
Students in an upper-level engineering course will work on innovative methods of providing good drinking water next semester, with one team traveling to Honduras to help a community and another competing in New Mexico with other schools across the nation in designing the best pollutant-removal system.
The course, Engineering and Policy Design Project, will be taught by Sharon Jones, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. David Brandes and Art Kney, assistant professors of civil and environmental engineering, will serve as consultants.
The Honduras project will be coordinated through Lafayette’s student chapter of Engineers Without Borders, and students outside the course are encouraged to participate, regardless of major. Brandes is advising the group, which was founded earlier this semester and will conduct fundraising and make preparations for the trip soon. Students do not have to enroll in the engineering course to participate.
Students will help the four communities of the Municipality of Yoro in the north center of the Republic of Honduras. Residents have long been suffering from social and health problems that no public or private organization has been able to solve. A major cause is the lack of hygienic water for consumption and domestic use. Residents use water from ponds and streams that are polluted by chemicals or animal waste.
Engineers Without Borders-USA is a non-profit organization established in 2000 to help developing areas worldwide with their engineering needs, while involving and training internationally responsible engineering students. Projects involve the design and construction of water, wastewater, sanitation, energy, and shelter systems. These projects are initiated by, and completed with, contributions from the host community, which is trained to operate the systems without external assistance. This ensures that projects are appropriate and self-sustaining.
The other group of students will develop and demonstrate a cost-effective treatment technology to remove perchlorate from drinking water in small water delivery and domestic water systems. Their findings will be compared with others April 4-8 at the 14th annual International Environmental Design Contest (IEDC) hosted by New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Last school year, eight students competed to develop the best low-cost method of removing arsenic from drinking water. They were the only group to take on the challenge outside of a class.
Perchlorate is both a naturally occurring and man-made chemical. Most of the perchlorate manufactured in the United States is used as the primary ingredient of solid rocket propellant. Wastes from the manufacture and improper disposal of perchlorate-containing chemicals are increasingly being discovered in soil and water. Perchlorate interferes with iodide uptake into the thyroid gland, interfering with the thyroid’s regulation of human metabolism.
Sponsored by the Waste-Management Education and Research Consortium, the IEDC challenges student teams to provide solutions to real-world environmental problems that have been submitted by private industry and government agencies. Judges represent government, industry, and academia. The teams prepare written, oral, poster, and bench-scale model presentations.