Members of Ohio State’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders will travel to El Salvador over spring break to build special latrines to improve sanitation in a city neighborhood.

Seven members of the group and a professional mentor will stay in the city of San Pedro Puxtla on the western edge of the Central American country. For a little more than a week they will work in the Las Pilitas neighborhood, a small, poor community on the outskirts
of the city.

Katie Zorc, a second-year in chemical engineering and the president of the OSU chapter, said the group planned to build three latrines which would serve between 30 and 40 families in the neighborhood.

The project began when the central Ohio chapter of Engineers Without Borders, made up of local professional engineers, adopted the community with plans to build a road and walkways to connect the poorer neighborhood to the rest of the city.

But the community also faced other challenges, Hal Walker, professor of engineering and the adviser for the group said.

“Most people didn’t have access to toilets and running water,” he said. In order to run a waterline, though, the area would first need proper sanitation.

And that’s where the OSU chapter comes in.

Building and designing a latrine is not as easy as just digging a hole in the ground, though.

Eric Richards, a second-year in mechanical engineering and the vice-president of the group, said there were a number of considerations the group had to weigh.

A basic hole in the ground would lead to a contaminated water supply. The neighborhood would also likely run out of places to dig holes if flooding from the rainy season didn’t collapse the pits first, Richards said.

After working with a professional engineer in the central Ohio chapter, they decided to use a double-lined, ventilated improved pit latrine.

This type of latrine acts as a composting toilet. Each latrine has two pits. After one has been filled, the other is used while the waste matter breaks down, becoming safe for removal after about two years.

The group, which is in its first year at OSU, struggled to raise the money to pay for their trip, said Richards, who, along with Zorc, is among the seven who will travel to El Salvador.

After holding fundraisers earlier in the year, the group still came up short, and will have to pay the travel expenses on their own.

Even though the members are stuck with the bill, Zorc, who said she had wanted to join the humanitarian engineering group since high school, said that didn’t dampen her excitement about the trip.

“It will be applying an engineering idea to real people and seeing the results,” she said.

“It’s also improving their quality of life which is not something you can say about every spring break,” she added.

The group will leave March 21 and stay in a San Pedro Puxtla community center. Members will pay a local woman $8 a day for meals.

Zorc and Richards said they had their schedule planned out.

“It’s pretty much non-stop while we’re there,” Richards said.

Aside from actually building the latrines, they will also teach the residents about sanitation and collect demographic information about the community for the national EWB.

The national group’s mission emphasizes “community-driven development,” and Zorc and Richards said they had worked with a Peace Corps volunteer, acting as a go-between, to get the community’s input on their design.

Often local communities lack engineering expertise and funding, said Walker, the OSU group’s adviser.

“But as far as planning, the community takes a lead role,” he added

Richards said it was important to involve the community because of what happens after the group leaves.

“It becomes their project…They’ll have the knowledge and the skills to continue on,” Richards said.

For most projects there is a five-year commitment to the community.

“This is the first trip to get the ball rolling. There’ll be many more trips after this,” Walker said.

Zorc said the group plans on visiting again at least once over the summer, and more after that.

“These aren’t the kinds of projects that you can go down, build and leave,” Walker said.