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Apiwan Buckner, left, helped raise $530 for the Putnam Rotary Club's major international project, a water project in Ecuador. She stands with club President Richard Naumann. Linda Lemmon photo.
PUTNAM --- The Putnam Rotary Club is on a mission to help fund a Rotary Global grant humanitarian water project in Ecuador. Many of the club's fund-raisers for the 2019-2020 year will go toward the project, according to Putnam Rotary Club President Richard Naumann.
Recently, when Naumann was talking about the project at a club lunch meeting at the Inn at Woodstock Hill, one of the servers, Apiwan Buckner, was listening and decided to help. She collected $530 for the project and presented it to Naumann. She's been a server at the inn for seven years, said Naumann, chef and owner of the inn.
The total cost of the project is $60,000. The Putnam club plans on raising about $20,000 and the balance will come from various Rotary organizations.
The project is in Santa Rosa River Basin in Ecuador. It will bring healthier lives to the residents. The river is the main source of water for the villages. The project would install residual water treatment plants or self-cleaning biodigesters to bring clean water to the residents and to protect the water quality of the river.
It's a two part system that solves the problem with sedimentation and then biologic filters.
The population that will benefit directly is 500 inhabitants made up of roughly 100 families as well as the residents of the city of Santa Rosa which number about 50,000, according to project information. The communities of El Guayabo, La Pereira and La Avanzada are located in the southern part of the county of Santa Rosa on the banks of the river of the same name. The three communities contain roughly 500 residents. The region’s economic activities are livestock, agriculture and tourism. They have systems for potable water but do not have treatment systems for wastewater that collects in septic ditches dug in the patios of every home. This wastewater eventually filters into the river causing bacterial contamination of this water body which serves as the main water source for the city of Santa Rosa whose urban population is around 50,000.
The objective of the project is to improve the health of the three communities and the city and improve their quality of life.
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