This is the faulty well and enclosed control room, threatened by a slowly dropping water table. Photo courtesy of Dr. Jim Hines
A well that supplies water for a Guatemalan girls’ home and clinic needs repair or replacement, and we’re turning to the E4C community for a solution. Your help could be as simple as sharing a good idea, or as generous as leading a water-source improvement project at the home. Whatever the level of commitment, we’d like to be a part of the solution as it transpires. These are the details.
The home
Fifty girls reside at the Prince of Peace home for girls in a suburb west of Guatemala City called San Cristobal. The home provides a school for the girls and a clinic that serves the broader community in the vicinity. International volunteers and staff work at the home, and its directors are Dr. Jim Hines, a doctor of internal medicine, and his wife, Kay, a school teacher, both immigrants to Guatemala from the United States.
The home is a registered non-profit organization in Guatemala and the United States. Its web site explains how to volunteer and donate.
The well
The well is 350ft deep into a water table that is slowly dropping. This month, the home replaced the well pump after gravel and sand entered and destroyed the pump’s impellers. Dr. Hines blames the water line.
“Our concern is that, as more and more development is occurring around us, the water table will continue to drop, resulting in more sand and rock in the water and eventually less water,” Dr. Hines told E4C. “The last pump lasted 12 months, whereas the previous one lasted about two years. I see the interval for changing pumps being shorter and shorter.”
The photo shows the well head next to a control building. The water is stored in a 12,000gal. holding tank, not pictured.
In 2008, the home received an assessment for a new well. It called for a new shaft, 800ft deep, entubated with either 6in or 8in carbon steel pipe.
Take action
You can contribute by posting your comments, creating a workspace, making donations to the girls’ home or any other way you can conceive.
Contact
To contact the home’s administration, please send email to popgua (at) gmail.com, or call (859) 408-9611 in the United States or 2443-3243 in Guatemala.
