Students from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department have participated in a project conducted by the Association of Volunteers for International Service (AVSI), an international non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) and the Water Energy and Environment Research Center (WEERC) at NDU. The project aim was to study the water quality in the Nahr El Kalb Watershed.

Four Groups from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at NDU were working as volunteers with AVSI and WEERC on the NEK project from the 17th of august till the 26 of September 2008. Students met regularly with Dr. Jacques Harb and the project manager Mrs. Maya Aoun to discuss the work activities accomplished on site and all the difficulties that they encountered. Students had training sessions on needed skills where specialists were invited such as Mr. Azzi who came to NDU to teach them on how to use the Global Positioning System (GPS). They were also trained on the use of GIS to enter the data and map them. After almost three weeks of collecting data, they started water testing in the CEE Department Laboratory at NDU.

Joe Chahwan, one of the students participating in the project said: We went to all the water sources and we took a lot of samples from the Nahr el Kalb River and carried them to the NDU lab to test them for coliform. The Nahr el Kalb project is a very important project and it was a really great experience for all of us especially that it was the first outside exposure in our major Also, it taught us how to communicate with people and how to ask them for information, because most the people were reluctant to give us information on how they disposed of contaminated water. The NEK project helped us to see what is wrong with the sewage system in Lebanon and helped us to think about a lot of ideas to solve this problem.

The students participating in the project were: Joe Chehwan; Firas Abou Rafeh; Ghassan ElHajal; Houssam Alsayegh; Nancy Rahbany; Omar Abou Kasm; Paul Ojeil; Sami Aazain and Tony Salameh.

A brainstorming and data analysis session with Ms. Maya Aoun

Water samples collected from Nahr El Kalb waiting to be tested

Equipment in NDU Labs used in testing water samples

The Nahr el Kalb river basin