The spring box was such a success that now Piriquina’s water storage tank fills up every night and even overflows. This gives us an opportunity for further improvement to the system by constructing an additional storage tank to capture this overflow and make it usable. Unfortunately, the next trip to construct the tank, originally planned for the summer of 2026, has been delayed due to lack of funding.
Piriquina gets most of its water supply from natural springs on the mountainside. The water from these springs is captured using a structure known as a spring box, which accumulates water and pipes it to the community. In the summer of 2025, five UTA students visited Piriquina and constructed an additional spring box to increase the available water supply by approximately 33%.
In the summer of 2023, we were able to do our very first assessment trip to Piriquina. Six UTA students went to Bolivia and teamed up to start this initiative. We were able to get a better insight of their needs, such as these:
