Regional Partners

Regional Partners are one of four organizations along with AguaClara-Cornell, Donors, and communities that are involved in any AguaClara project.

Drinking water supply infrastructure whether implemented at the community or household scale requires a commitment to building both physical infrastructure and community capacity and expectations of success. The construction phase is approximately 4 months and is only a small fraction of the project calendar. Regional Partners take the lead role in choosing communities, based on water quality deficiencies and equally important, on community assets such as organization and ability to maintain qualified operators and finance the aluminum sulfate and chlorine.

Initial sites for new regional partners should be located within very close proximity to the regional partner's offices to simplify logistics and reduce mobilization costs. Cost savings can also be realized if the regional partner builds clusters of water treatment plants to enable a single structural engineer to supervise multiple construction sites.

The regional partners develop funding streams to finance implementation of all aspects and stages of the water treatment plants from community assessment to plant performance monitoring and oversight.

The responsibilities of the regional partners are to:

A - Assess community match with the technology
S - Structural design using local materials and based on the AguaClara design
B - Build the water treatment plant
O - Operate the plant to prove to the community that the technology is effective
T - Train plant operators from the community
T - Transfer ownership of the plant to the local municipality or water board
O - Oversee with visits to the community at least several times per year
M - Monitor and review plant operating records and follow up on any performance issues

Build, operate, transfer is a well know infrastructure implementation strategy. The AguaClara model draws on that model, but recognizes the need for greater emphasis on community assessment, capacity building, and a low level of oversight after the project has been fully transferred to the municipality or local water board.