So we had our interview with Tiffany from the National Chapter of EWB on wednesday and discussed our site assessment trip back in March. One of the key things to take from this interview was the necessity for having a written agreement between our group and the recipient families of the composting latrines. This serves both as a means of solidifying a commitment from the families and also as a clarification for them on what our scope is for this project.

Our pre-implementation papers have been sent in and we will be expecting a TAC review within the next few weeks to discuss our trip, which is scheduled for mid September.

During our assessment trip back in March, Tim, Warren, and I had a conversation with Leonel Luna, The president of FUNCOS. He told us that in addition to the obvious need for sanitation improvement within the area, there was also the potential for hydroelectric dam construction that would be used to power Kukra River, which currently has no source of electricity. Since then, Hannah Lawrence, Hagan O'Connor, and myself (Julia Pasternack) have performed a fairly detailed analysis on the feasibility of such an undertaking for our UCLA senior design project. The outcomes revealed that for optimum efficiency and under the fairly low head and flow conditions, a kaplan turbine with a synchronous AC generator mounted via a directly coupling shaft would be the optimum choice. Our resultant poster is provided below. However, it should be noted that further analysis will indeed be pursued by both UCLA students as well as correspondents in Nicaragua.