Our Recommendation

Wisdom of the Fathers
The system originally designed and installed by Dr. Mellon in 1954 recognized the limitations of the water source. It was a simple, robust system that functioned with little maintenance or cost for over 50 years.

For Cas Charles, it was only through over development of the residential areas by people who didn’t understand the hydraulics of the system followed by the destructive forces of the environment due to deforestation and flooding that the system had failed.

Our Recommendations
Therefore our recommendation to the Cite and to HAS was that the system should be replaced to function much as Dr. Mellon had originally conceived it with alterations in the spring box design and the water line alignment to take into consideration the changes that had occurred in the valley due to environmental damage.

Does it Make Sense?
This proposal does not allow for the continued residential development of this area with pressurized water at each home which would be a US model, and be sustained in this environment.

In fact much of the damage to Dr. Mellon’s original system was caused by overdevelopment of the system and trying to mimic a “modern” US design with pressurized water delivered to all locations.

What about Socio-Economic Impacts?
Water can be delivered by the system to the reservoir in the village and by water line distribution to down gradient areas if desired. Up gradient must be discontinued.

This will not be easy for the local water board to accomplish due to social/political impacts within the community, and historically HAS and Cite have failed to be able to prevent the freeses in their systems.

Is our thinking ok?
There is much work to be done in the developing world that requires the kinds of thinking, planning, and designing that US engineers have traditionally been educated in.

However, much of our engineering in the US is driven by regulations and free market development economy.

We are taught to think of the growth and economic development of all of the areas that we are working in and to plan for future needs with the assumption that all future people will want the same level of service or more than the current people and to a great extent that the raw resources and monies will be there to meet those needs.

We are starting to feel the limitations of water resources in the US now and additional considerations need to be given to what we are designing. But still we design as if the development will never cease, and we legislate where the future water will come from.