The Wish...

We wish for support of innovation, engineering design development, and a network of implementing organizations that together will disseminate robust, high performing, low cost, sustainable municipal drinking water treatment plants.

Resources to Scale AguaClara Globally

AguaClara at Cornell

Research and Innovation ($180,000 to $255,000 per year)

The research teams are able to function effectively in part because of our management structure that relies on M.S./Ph.D. students to guide the work of M. Eng. and undergraduates. Because of the high turnover of students (yes, our best students do graduate!) we rely on graduate students and senior members of the team to transfer knowledge to new students. We need a Teaching Assistant fellowship to guide the research teams. ($75,000 per year)
There are several projects that require in depth and ongoing research that require the focus of a graduate student. We need at least one or if possible two Graduate Research Fellowship. ($75,000 to $150,000 per year)
Research and Innovation also requires test facilities, supplies, and fabrication services. ($30,000 per year)
The laboratory research space is currently fully utilized and thus if the team grows in future years it will be necessary to provide additional laboratory space.
We rely heavily on CEE technical services for fabricating test apparatus. ($5,000 per year)

Automated Design Tool ($33,000 per year)

We need a computer facility with at least 8 workstations with Mathcad and Autocad that can be reserved for use by the Design Tool team for their multiple weekly meetings.
The design team can normally be led by a Master of Engineering student who had design experience on the AguaClara team as an undergraduate. The design team leader needs an M.Eng. fellowship ($33,000 per year)

Engineering in a Global Context Intersession Trip ($30,000 per year)

Although Cornell students do NOT build AguaClara facilities, they do need to see how their research and design work is constructed and used. The innovation cycle requires that engineers receive feedback to continually improve the designs and to generate new research questions. We take 20 students to visit AguaClara water treatment plants as well as other water treatment plant designs during the January intersession. The team trips are an incredibly valuable educational experience as students see how design methodologies and design philosophies translate into success or failure during implementation and operation. ($30,000 per year)

Travel and Conferences

There are many conference opportunities where we could share our approach to providing safe drinking, network with other organizations, and learn about approaches to development and about technologies that could be useful to the program. There will also be opportunities for providing training sessions to facilitate dissemination of the technology in new regions. ($5,000 per year)

Plant Construction ($50,000 per year)

We have reached the point where AguaClara plants are being financed by other organizations and thus we no longer need funding for plant construction. We are committed to innovation and continual design improvements and we will need to test innovations at full scale. We will continue to collaborate with Agua Para el Pueblo in Honduras as the test platform for innovation. We will need ongoing funding to build AguaClara plants or to upgrade existing facilities to incorporate the latest innovations. We anticipate the need to test innovations at full scale at least once per year to maintain a high rate of knowledge generation. The annual budget for these full scale facilities is $50,000. In the very near term this will make it possible for AguaClara to test our invention of stacked rapid sand filters that are expected to make it possible to add filtration to AguaClara plants. We are also developing improved chemical dosing equipment, more efficient plate setters, and better hydraulic designs that all need to be tested at full scale.

AguaClara Professional Organization ($??0,000)

As the number of partner organizations that are building AguaClara plants begins to grow it becomes imperative that these organizations create a network to share best practices and that there be an AguaClara Professional Organization (APO) that provides technical support and capacity building for implementation partners. We anticipate that the AguaClara Engineers will be incorporated into the APO. The APO will place AguaClara Engineers with partner organizations with a fee and financial structure that is yet to be determined. The APO will also work directly with the team at Cornell to provide documentation for design and implementation. The documentation will cover topics from initial meetings with communities to site design to operation manuals. The APO is currently in the concept phase and we see this as a critical part of our strategy to disseminate the technology.

AguaClara Engineers ($40,000 per year)

The APO will manage the AguaClara Engineers that will continue to provide technical assistance to implementation partners. The annual budget is $20,000 per AguaClara Engineer. We need two AguaClara Engineers currently given the number of projects that are underway in Central America.

AguaClara in Latin America

Permanent Funding to Employ National Staff (ie Hondurans, Guatemalans, etc) or Fund National Staff in the Implementation Partner Organization - Expansion depends on building a program where we work that gains the confidence and respect of in-country authorities. This takes much patience and time, more than an AguaClara Engineer from Cornell will likely have to dedicate to the project. For this reason and others, we need a permanent staff of nationals in each country in which we would work. The more capabilities this staff has to work independently, the more flexibility the AguaClara Engineers will have to fulfill their primary purpose, which is to maintain the link between the academic advances at Cornell and the on-the-ground projects. The staff needs to feel a sense of ownership and belonging to the project (as well as to feel it meets their employment needs), in the same way we desire the beneficiary communities to feel a sense of ownership for the sake of project sustainability. To truly promote understanding that emanates from the internal level instead of promoting a paternalistic model, we should strive to trust our national partners with high levels of responsibility.
I outline the general levels of personnel we would need below. These spaces could be filled by separate people, or by the same personal fulfilling various roles, such as the technician being the educator, or the engineer also acting as executive and grant writer:
1. Technician: responsible for understanding and implementing water collection, transport, treatment, and monitoring infrastructure at the practical level, as well as diagnostic studies and surveys. Needs to be able to train other technicians and plant operators
2. Engineer: capable of designing a plant in not alone then lead a small design team. Implies understanding the hydraulic and structural designs and consequences of design decisions on the long term functionality of the plant.
3. Community organizer/educator: responsible for communication at the community and national level, awareness building, technical workshops, organizational training, accounting, etc (all the pieces of a water service organization).
4. Executive: responsible for project management, political relations, grant writing, personnel management
Plan of Action for AguaClara Partners: for the ideas in (1) to work we need a cogent scheme for what is required of an implementation partner. We need to define organization requirements, personnel requirements, technical capabilities, reporting scheme, capacity for financial self-support, and capacity for generating their own research and development. To expand without a cogent plan would quickly unravel the coherency of the projects.
Improve the Public Website: While the AguaClara wiki is a tremendous tool for knowledge sharing internally in the project, and the current public website isn't bad, organizations these days rely heavily on a concise website with effective communication materials. Potential partners and donors will judge us by our website first before all things, and even though this isn't just it is a modern reality. We can improve ours since we have all the material to put on it. All we need is time and some funding to get it looking up to date. I very much like the Water for Waslala website style, that includes lots of easily access photos, and blog style updates: http://www.waterforwaslala.org/
Create Strategies for Improved Financial Management of Projects - We can improve our management of "el billete" at both the implementation partner level and at the community level. We should also consider here new strategies for public water projects. At the institutional level, it will be key for expansion to define what kind of financial record keeping the partner organization needs to maintain, who shall audit them, and if AguaClara central has anything to do with this aspect of the projects. At the community level, we should increase our knowledge base of practical strategies to keep the water service providers viable (this mainly goes for rural areas where systems are less part of a city's municipal system), including how to create and get accepted reasonable rate hikes, water metering, accounting training, accounting transparency, finding the best prices for chemicals, and community personnel management. Innovative strategies that are on the horizon are revolving funds for water treatment plants made available to communities with no history of credit, and working with communities to understand the immense economical benefits to having a constant supply of safe water so that they can consider purchasing a plant independently and implement a payback plan. In general, this wish is that we acquire, generate, and implement more knowledge of community enterprise organization, capitalization, and operation (because the plant don't work if no one cares enough to keep it funded).
National Level Outreach and Media Campaign in Country: I believe that the concept that public safe water can be cheaper and of better quality than bottled water is crucial for communities to consider investing in a water treatment plant. This concept is also a very cultural thing: in the US, it is mainstream, in Honduras and many other countries it is not, especially in those mid sized towns that have enough people to have real environmental problems but are too small to have received the benefits of major infrastructure investments. In Honduras, you hear myriad radio ads for water in 5 gallon bottles, how it is safe for your family. The water ads for public water mostly have to do with conservation in the dry season. To think big, we should consider participating in national level campaigns to plant the seed of considering tap water as the best alternative, showing just how much cheaper it can be, without the waste of material for water containers, pollution from water trucks, etc. Demand creation.

Immediate Funding Needs as of November 2010 (by date when the funds are needed)
These funds are needed by the dates shown to maintain an excellent program.

$40,000 (immediately) to fund the AguaClara Engineers. Our funding ran out in August 2010 and the two AguaClara Engineers have been working without pay since then. We are now down to one AguaClara Engineer. We need to provide continuity in the AguaClara Engineering positions and thus we need to hire a new AguaClara Engineer immediately.
$20,000 (by mid November) to send 20 members of the AguaClara team to Honduras in January 2011. We have limited funding for this trip this year and that has made the trip inaccessible to many students.
$37,000 (by May 2011) to fund 3 graduate students over the summer and to run the AguaClara summer program with students working at Cornell and in Honduras.

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Strategic Plan