Matt Moughamian's Story

MWH Employee Aids Honduran Hurricane Victims

On Oct. 31, 1998, Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras with a vengeance.  The mighty storm dropped up to four feet of rain, caused massive landslides and river flooding and killed more than 15,000 people.  Total infrastructure damage reached several billion dollars.

A long-time volunteer with humanitarian organizations, MWH Senior Engineer Matt Moughamian was asked by the U.S. Crisis Corps to assist with water infrastructure recovery efforts in Honduras.

In 1999, Moughamian spent five weeks of vacation and three paid weeks of leave-of-absence time to generate safe well-water supplies in several ravaged communities there.

“Many communities had been totally destroyed and the residents had to be relocated to higher ground to build new communities,” Moughamian says.  “My job was to train other volunteers and design new water supply systems in three newly located communities.  Most systems required either drilling new wells and installing submersible pumps (if electricity were present), or renovating existing systems that were either inadequate or damaged by floodwaters.”

In one community, he helped local well drillers construct and test two new wells drilled to approximately 300 feet deep.  Permanent power wasn’t installed to the wells before Moughamian’s departure since the nearest electrical power was two miles away, so he helped install temporary hand pumps.

“Watching these women and children carry water on their heads, and knowing how physically and emotionally hard their lives are, I felt grateful that I could help out and hopefully make their lives a little healthier and easier."

Long History of Helping Others

Before coming to MWH in 1989, Moughamian and his wife spent two years in the Ecuadorian Andes as Peace Corps volunteers, and he worked as a water sanitation engineer.

“The work was physically challenging at such high elevation and at times frustrating due to both communication and cultural barriers,” Moughamian recalls.  “However, bringing safe, spring-fed drinking water to approximately 8,000 indigenous farmers, who previously had to retrieve drinking water from dirty irrigation ditches, was a life-changing experience.”

After joining MWH, Moughamian joined a volunteer organization called Lifewater International.  Its volunteers include water-sanitation professionals who work on well-drilling training and well-construction projects in developing countries.  With Lifewater International, he has worked on projects in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia and India.