State of Loreto, Peru
Leaf Eliminator Project
A New Leaf
In 2018, EWB-UH was approached by the EWB Central Houston Professional Chapter for help. The Houston Professional Chapter had been engineering and building rainwater collection systems throughout Loreto, Peru, starting in 2016. There was a problem. The communities where the collection system had been and was planning to be built in were located in the Amazon Rainforest. This meant that the rainwater collection system was also collecting the debris that the rain carried with it. These types of debris include leafs, dirt, and insects. The EWB Houston Professional Chapter approached EWB-UH in order to help them develop a solution to this problem.
The Design
EWB-UH engineered a design that we be called the Leaf Eliminator in order to help the EWB Houston Professional Chapter. The Leaf Eliminator was able to withstand a flow rate of 52 gallons per minute with a minimum water retention rate of 85%. The system is designed so that debris traveling with rainwater will be filtered and leave the pipe-age with no human intervention. The Leaf Eliminator requires nominal maintenance after installation because of this self-cleaning trait. With a vertical height of under 1 foot, the Leaf Eliminator is also compact and easy to build from scratch.
Project Impact
Once the Leaf Eliminator was completed, the EWB Houston Professional Chapter ventured to Mariscal Castilla (a community in Loreto) in order to install the system. They installed the Leaf Eliminator into the already existing rainwater collection system. The water flowing out of the Leaf Eliminator was directed into a newly build, high-traffic water distribution system. The system come out to be over 300 meters in length. The Leaf Eliminator has been and is currently being used by a village of over 100 residents in order to obtain safe and clean drinking water.
