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Lots of surveying at La Palmerita

Back in February, the people of La Palmerita participated in designing the division of agricultural land for their community at a workshop organised by Nuevas Esperanzas.  The map they created was photographed, digitized and sent to a professional architect who then set about turning their design into a proper site plan with each lot having exactly the same area of land.

The former coffee workers were not idle while waiting for the final map to be completed, however.  In order to mark the position of each lot, concrete boundary markers will be used and these all had to be made.  Nuevas Esperanzas delivered the materials and moulds and gave the community a short training session on how to make these boundary stones.  Only a matter of days later, community leaders let us know that there were 300 markers ready and waiting to be put in place!   With the map approved by the community, the Attorney General’s office and the local Mayor’s office, and the boundary markers ready, the surveying of over 150 lots could begin.

Things were not quite that easy, though.  Previous surveys of the area were very poor and in order to locate the exact position of the land on the national grid a bench mark out on the main road just over 5km from La Palmerita had to be used.  This bench mark had been well hidden by the surveyors who installed it to prevent it being stolen, but a visit to the Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies in Managua gave us clear directions of where to dig and locate the mark!  Thanks to Condor, a British mining company based in León, we were then able to use differential GPS equipment to establish markers at La Palmerita with precise coordinates.  A total station is now being used to identify the correct corner point of each lot so that the corner stones can be installed.

As the surveying began a complication was soon discovered.  The exact location of the area on previous maps has been displaced by up to 20 metres in comparison with the real location of the overall property in the field.  So the plans have been redrawn, measurements corrected and the surveying of lots of lots at La Palmerita is back on track.  Once all the markers are in place, the work will move to the offices of lawyers in León who will produce the final title documents.

We are very grateful to the Oxford León Trust for funding this surveying work.

04/06/09