Christine Boland-Prom, Blake Bostwick, Rebekah Janquart, Jamie Nguyen, Julian Sonn and Jamie Sykora took first place in the Water Environmental Federation (WEF) Environmental Category of the Central States Water Environment Association (CSWEA) Student Design Competition.  

Since the beginning of the school year, these civil engineering majors have been preparing a design for a municipal wastewater treatment system in the community of Joyabaj, Guatemala. They designed two facilities to serve 5,000 people. Currently, there is no treatment facility in Joyabaj—only a collection system. Keeping operation and maintenance costs to a minimum were an extremely important design consideration, as was minimizing the use of pumps by utilizing the steep slope to gravity feed the system.

Their work will be published in CSWater Magazine and they are invited to participate in the Water Environment Federation’s design competition at WEFTEC-2020 in New Orleans, the world’s largest annual water quality technical conference and exhibition.