CU-EWB Morocco was founded in December 2010 when Columbia alumna and Peace Corps Volunteer Nina Morency-Brassard reached out to CU-EWB with a potential project in Ait Bayoud, Morocco. During the rainy season, the Tagawowt River consistently floods for several weeks, and isolates communities in the rural Northern Bank of Ait Bayoud from the schools, markets and clinic located on the more developed
Southern Bank. In order to join the North and South Banks of Ait Bayoud we partnered with local leaders in Ait Bayoud and the Peace Corps to construct the world’s longest high-density polymer, simple suspension footbridge. Following its completion in June 2013, CU-EWB Morocco continues to perform maintenance and inspect the bridge and has been working with residents from Ait Bayoud to transfer full ownership to the community. Around the time of the bridge’s completion, members of Izgouaren and Ilguiloda, two dwars (villages) in Ait Bayoud, contacted our group about their need for potable water, leading us to our current focus: The Ait Bayoud Water Project. Due to their remote location Izgouaren and Ilguiloda are two of the most impoverished areas in the region. Containing communities largely composed of subsistence farmers, Izgouaren and Ilguiloda rely heavily on water collected from local springs to support their populations. The typical journey to the nearest potable spring takes 3 hours and includes a steep 300ft descent from the top of the remote plateau where where the communities are located. During the dry season, this journey must be made several times a day in order to secure enough water to meet their daily needs. Once completed, the Ait Bayoud Water Project will provide safe and easily accessible drinking water directly to the communities through a water sourcing and distribution system. Since this project began in 2014, CU-EWB Morocco has sent travel teams composed of three to six Columbia University student members to Ait Bayoud for three-week assessment and implementation trips each summer and winter. Our initial assessment trips involved working with and listening closely to the local leaders and villagers of Ait Bayoud in order to a design a solution that best fit their expressed needs. In January of 2015 we installed the well and have since installed 1,500 meters of piping out of the total 3,200 meters needed to complete the pipeline. During our latest trip this past January, our team focused on testing the pipes that we have laid down so far and testing the water quality. This semester our water team has been designing a temporary water distribution site, which will give the villagers access to water while we work to complete the pipeline, as well as a sediment filtration system. Our piping team has been analyzing the best ways to prevent future leakages in the pipeline and make the system as efficient and sustainable as possible. Our bridge team has been working on creating a picture based guide that the community members and local leaders can use to inspect the bridge themselves and perform routine maintenance. This August, CU-EWB Morocco will be sending a travel team composed of three Columbia University Engineering students to Ait Bayoud for three weeks to continue implementation of the Ait Bayoud Water Project and to continue maintenance on the completed footbridge. Specifically, this will involve performing tests to ensure the safety of the well water, testing the pipes already installed, installing a temporary distribution site to give the villagers immediate access to water, and performing an inspection of the bridge as well as adding and pretensioning a new rope.
