In a small, antiquated-looking brick building adjacent to the Mundy Wildflower Garden is one of Cornell's most critical facilities -- a modern, computerized water treatment and filtration system responsible for providing all of the university's drinking water. The facility also is equipped to meet the future water demands of campus.

All of that water -- currently 1.5 million gallons a day for 35,000 people, drawn off of Fall Creek just above Flat Rock -- is monitored by six staff members. One of them recently went with Cornell students to Honduras to share his knowledge about water treatment methods and pitch in to help lay pipe for a new plant.

Chris Bordlemay, manager of Cornell's Water Filtration Plant, spent about 16 days in January as part of Cornell's team of 18 students, led by civil and environmental engineering senior lecturer Monroe Weber-Shirk as part of the project AguaClara (Clear Water). This project works with the Honduran organization Agua Para el Pueblo (Water for the People), to bring fresh, potable drinking water to rural towns across Honduras (see related Chronicle articles Jan. 23, Feb. 4, Feb.13). With Bordlemay's degree in environmental science and his hands-on work with the Environmental Protection Agency and then at water plants in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maryland, as well as Cornell, Bordlemay was asked to accompany the team and lend his applied skills and perspective to their work.

"We toured about a dozen facilities, some in various stages of construction," Bordlemay said, from the village of La 34, one of Cornell's first plants in Honduras, where he made operational recommendations, to Ojojona, where he observed the formal ceremony handing over the plant to the local water board and offered recommendations, to Támara, where ground is being broken on another plant. Bordlemay finished his tour by working at Marcala, site of a plant currently under construction. "It was very rewarding," he said. "I felt very helpful, putting pipe together and providing training sessions to explain certain aspects of the treatment process."

Bordlemay also enjoyed working with the students: "The students and Monroe made me feel very welcome, and we had a lot of fun. We all gained an appreciation for the culture and conditions."

For instance, the plants Cornell is working on in Honduras are all designed to run solely by gravity, as electricity in the Honduran mountains is not available at the plant sites. "We use the same process in Honduras as in the U.S. to eliminate sediments by getting them to clump together, and by adding chlorine to disinfect the water, but we cannot filter the water or monitor it the way we do here at Cornell," Bordlemay explained.

To make these treatment systems work, and to continually improve on their designs, the civil and environmental engineering students in Weber-Shirk's classes first build prototypes of their new designs in the Cornell treatment plant. "About six students come here each semester to work on the prototypes," Bordlemay said. "Monroe oversees their work, and I will offer suggestions to them about various techniques, while my colleague Tom Rapalee will help them with the physical construction."

Bordlemay said he most enjoys the opportunity his work gives him to do a wide variety of things and to reach out to assist others. "I came back from Honduras energized about my job," he said, "because I could see how what we do at Cornell can make such a difference."

Currently, Bordlemay is overseeing the construction of an additional water tank (there are currently three at the Cornell Plantations), which will serve as a storage facility for the finished purified water. This fourth tank will be built on Hungerford Hill to meet the increased water needs in the East Hill area and the future growth of the university.