Clean Water Projects

Lack of safe drinking water is a serious problem in the area of Honduras where we work, as we have found through laboratory testing of the community water system in Santa Clara. Medical personnel in the region invariably describe contaminated water as one of the primary causes of sickness, particularly among children who suffer repeated bouts of diarrhea and other gastrointestinal distress. Similar situations around the world are being improved by the use of family-size sand filters that clean up water through a combination of simple sand filtration and the formation of a biological layer that forms on top of the sand and consumes most of the contaminants. In January, 2009, a team from the Samaritan's Purse office in San Pedro Sula came to Santa Clara at our request to begin an educational and organizing effort aimed at installing BioSand Filters in all the homes in the community by late summer. Their standard practice includes training the community in public sanitation and personal hygiene principles, organizing the community into mutual help teams, and working with the community to build and install the filters. Following installation, Samaritan's Purse experts make return visits after one, three, six, and twelve months to assure that the filters are working as designed, that the families understand how to keep the filters producing drinkable water, and that the other sanitation practices are being implemented in the community. The measure of success will be whether and how soon we will see a significant reduction in the number of times the mothers have to take their sick kids to the public health centers for water-related diseases.

While this program is underway, we plan to be using some field test kits that will provide an inexpensive 24-hour visual indicator of the presence or absence of e. coli, the primary contaminant normally found in the drinking water. The testing is expected to be convincing to those who doubt the presence of dangers they cannot see. The test kits can also be taken out by our medical team to determine the need for water purification in other villages in the region.