USU Students Win Engineering Challenge With Water Treatment Solution for Costa Rican Town

When the septic tanks started failing in the town of San Rafael de Guatuso, Costa Rica, it contaminated the groundwater, causing a hazard for both the environment and the community drinking water. In response to this crisis, Utah State University students took on the challenge to create a solution.

Kamden Lloyd and his team from USU’s Water Environment Association of Utah student chapter won the Utah Student Design Challenge in April 2026 with their design for a wastewater treatment plant for San Rafael de Guatuso.

Lloyd said the goal of the challenge was to provide a feasible solution to strengthen the town's case for funding a treatment plan, as has been done in other cities. To achieve this, the team had to work within criteria to design a plant that was cost-effective, environmentally manageable, and operable without prior training.

“We settled on a lagoon system where contaminated water comes into the plant and gets deposited into different lagoons to be treated by the sun’s UV rays,” Lloyd said. “Once the water is disinfected, we proposed that the town use that water to create an irrigation system for plants that they can repurpose and sell to help improve their economy.”

Joined by students from Iowa State University, the team was awarded a trip to Costa Rica to present their design to the town’s municipalities. They visited proposed treatment plant sites, attended meetings to discuss the logistics of the treatment plants, and collaborated with local drinking water authorities on water resource management of their proposed plant.

USU students also had the opportunity to teach kids in first through sixth grades at local schools about the water cycle and construct a bio garden at the elementary in San Rafael.

“Seeing the impact and being able to connect with these young kids really sits with you,” Lloyd said. "You realize that these projects are bigger than just this competition and that these people need and want help, and you get to help them.”

Lloyd said the team felt a deep sense of fulfillment from implementing everything they’d learned into the project and being able to answer the questions of the municipalities and local drinking water engineers.

He credited the atmosphere, professors and courses at USU for preparing him for this challenge.

“There are courses where you may think, ‘I'm never going to use this,’ but we probably used things we learned from every single class we've taken in this project because of all the complexities,” Lloyd said. "Classes can make an impact, they really can."

The trip to Costa Rica was sponsored by the nonprofit Global Water Stewardship and the Water Environment Association of Utah. Ryan Dupont, a USU environmental engineering professor, attended the trip to offer support.