LOCATIONS:
Payorote, San Francisco & Mariscal Castilla Communities, along the Amazon River and its two primary tributaries, the Marañón and Ucayali Rivers.
Maynas Province, District of Nauta, Peru (51 miles from Iquitos, Peru)
COMMUNITY DETAILS:
Payorote, San Francisco and Mariscal Castilla are small communities in the region surrounding the town of Nauta. This region offers unique challenges due to their remote locations of the villages on the banks of the Amazon River and aging populations with minimal-to-no income. In addition to receiving 112+ inches of rain annually, every year these communities must deal with a 35-foot rise & fall of the Amazon River, often leaving the communities under 3-5 feet of floodwaters for months at a time. As a result of this same flooding, communities lose tens of meters of riverbank to erosion every year and, consequently, are constantly relocating homes away from river’s edge.
These communities have always lacked access to any kind of clean water. They practice outside defecation and have marginal hygiene practices. These deficits combine to cause some of the highest incidence of water-related illness, including diarrhea and parasitic infection, in this part of the world.
Our Peru Program is working with the villagers of these communities and our local Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) partner Amazon Promise, which has worked in this region of Peru for 20+ years, for construction and ongoing infrastructure maintenance. In addition to these partnerships, the Peru Program works with the Rotary Club of Galleria River Oaks, the Rotary Club of Houston, and the Peruvian Rotary Club Amanecer Loretano to affect permanent positive change in the lives of these very capable communities, as well own program volunteers.
PROGRAM SUMMARY:
This program’s primary goal is to affect positive change in community thinking and action regarding their access to, and ownership of, clean drinking water, the creation of effective and dignified sanitation, and the adoption of effective hygiene practices that will improve health, childhood learning ability, and the robust viability of the community.
PROGRAM ADOPTION DATE:
July 2015
PROJECT STATUSES:
Our current projects are addressing some exciting new topics. Would you like to help? Anyone is welcome to join!
Active – Payorote, Peru – Latrine Sanitation Project (2022 – Ongoing)
Our active project is to co-create universally adopted, affordable, and easily-sustained latrines for the community of Payorote. These latrines will have to function under 3+ feet of flood water for months at a time as well as in dry conditions, all the while sustaining a target effluent quality that is clean enough to safely swim in.
Swimming-in and dealing with latrine-contaminated water might sound foreign and disgusting to you, but it is a fact of life for nearly 40% of the world’s population! To our knowledge, our latrine design will be a global first – if we succeed.
Beginning in 2022, the team took first steps in developing an ingenious sanitation system which could withstand the harsh nature of the Amazon environment. The team constructed 10 test rainwater-fed sanitations systems for households within the community, with variations in design having been introduced between each test system to determine the optimum setup. Through monitoring over the course of the year and with feedback provided by the community and Amazon Promise, the team identified a design for large-scale use.
With the team having received a sizable grant from EWB-USA in late 2025, the team is now moving forward with construction of 50+ similar rainwater-fed latrine systems through the Amazon community. While the grant gets the team off to a good start, continued support and volunteers continue to be a top need to move this and future projects to successful completion.
COMPLETED PROJECTS (ACTIVE MONITORING PHASE)
Monitoring – Payorote, Peru – Rain Catchment Project (2016)
Impact: Clean drinking water access for 250 people
After 8+ years of operation, the rainwater harvesting system in Payorote is still in good function, receiving regular maintenance from the community in an effort to sustain their reliable source for clean drinking water. The community has reported a decrease in water-related illnesses and expressed a continued desire for improving their quality of life.
Monitoring – Mariscal Castilla, Peru – Rain Catchment Project (2018)
Impact: Clean drinking water access for 186 people
The community of Mariscal Castilla is extremely excited to have its first ever rainwater harvesting system to supply their needs for clean drinking water. This village previously relied on the pink dolphin-visited, but very dirty, Ucayali River at the head of the Amazon River for its drinking water until they sought out the Peru Program for a better solution.
In the fall of 2018 the Peru Program helped the villagers install a gravity-fed rainwater catchment system that literally required the raising of the roof of their community building.
Monitoring – Mariscal Castilla, Peru – Water Distribution Project (2019)
In 2019 the team returned to Mariscal Castilla to install a 1000-foot long water distribution system to ease the burden of fetching the clean water. A monitoring trip in the fall of 2020 indicated the community is doing a splendid job taking care of the rainwater catchment & distribution infrastructure and financing all of the repairs on their own after two years of service.
Monitoring – San Francisco, Peru – Rain Catchment Project (2020)
Impact: Clean drinking water access for 400 people
The community of San Francisco was assessed in 2018 during the Mariscal Castilla rain catchment Phase 1 Implementation. The community relied on a dirty creek and a majestic, but highly-contaminated Marañón River for drinking water. The Peru Program designed and helped the villagers install two gravity-fed rainwater harvesting systems to supply clean, chlorinated drinking water at two sites in this nearly 1.5 km-long remote community. During this installation the team introduced a new technology in this area of Peru by way of using cement-stabilized soil for the system foundations.
A follow-up monitoring visit was made 9 months after the installation, at which time we found the villagers taking excellent care of the facilities and collecting community water fees to sustain the system on their own.
Completed – Payorote, Peru – Floating Dock Project (2022)
One of our completed projects was the design and installation of a first-ever floating dock for the community of Payorote made out of material more sustainable than hard-to-find balsa wood, with the additional design consideration that the dock will have to cope with an ever-changing river bank locations and heights as a result of the annual river elevation fluctuations of 35+ feet!
Community members found themselves often needing to re-anchor or move their boats due to the constantly shifting shoreline. At worst, community members may need to port their boats out of the river, up the steep shoreline, into the village for safe storage.
With the addition of the novel floating dock using locally-available resources, the community of Payorote could more easily tie up their boats to a more stable location, as well as move the dock for safety when adjusting for the annual river flooding.
TEAM LEADS:
- Mark Illian – Program Lead and Mentor
- Margaret Carpenter – Payorote Latrine Sanitation Project Lead
- Jose Valles, In-country Liaison (Amazon Promise)
We are actively looking for support on all fronts. We need volunteers (engineers and non-engineers, alike) to help, interested donors, and supporters to help us spread the word.
To understand the impact you can make as a volunteer, please read this first-person account from one of the team’s former volunteers, Philip Washington, RPA, an archaeologist by training – read here.
Please contact us using the button below to find out how you can help us provide the Peruvian Amazon communities with a sustainable source of clean water! Additionally, you can visit our EWB Peru Project Facebook Group, our team LinkedIn, or follow us on Instagram for updates!