Armenta, Honduras

THE COMMUNITY

At the time of this project, the village of Armenta had over 350 homes with an estimated population of 2000. Located in the northwest of the City of San Pedro Sula, Amenta rests in the foothills of the mountains that border the west side of San Pedro Sula.

The community had electricity, a medical center and shared a school and police station with a nearby community. Many people who lived in Armenta worked in nearby San Pedro Sula. Small one room stores attached to homes were spread throughout the community. The roads were unpaved and severely rutted. There was 60% unemployment.

THE NEED

Armenta had a critical water supply shortage:

1. Families only had access to water 1 day a week to fill up their pillas (home water storage facility). They draw all water for drinking, preparing food, laundry, bathing, sanitation, etc, from that single home storage source throughout the week. 

2. The current water lines were in urgent need of rehabilitation and were greatly undersized due to the continued population growth.  

3. The medical center that treated both people and animals often went without water for days 

OUR INVOLVEMENT

Members of Dayton Service Engineering Collective and EWB Chicagoland Professional Chapter (EWBCPC) visited Armenta on August 12, 2011. While in the community, the teams were able to meet with Pastor Neptali and Armondo, the President of the Armenta Water Council and Village Vice President to assess the community’s needs.

To address this situation our EWB team met with community leaders, assessed their resources and long term needs and then developed a plan so construct a new water system that would meet their needs for the next 20 years.

THE RESULTS

1. In 2013, we installed a 55,000 gal water storage tank!

2. In 2014, we installed all the new distribution pipe network throughout town. This included the installation of 6 new suspension pipe bridges and over 1.5 miles of pipe throughout the community.

3. In 2015, we completed the dam/water intake installation, a new sediment tank and two transmission pipe bridges up in the forested mountains.