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AguaClara Concept Paper
Brief intro:
AguaClara is a project of Cornell University that is improving drinking water quality through innovative research, knowledge transfer, and design of sustainable and scalable water treatment systems. AguaClara water treatments plants are designed to treat turbid surface waters at the municipal scale without using electricity or other dependent technologies. AguaClara plants have a one-time construction cost of less than $20 per person and then a nominal monthly fee is needed to pay for the maintenance and supplies needed to keep the plant operational.
The problem:
Lack of safe drinking water is a major problem globally with over 1 billion people lacking access to improved drinking water. It is possible that an additional billion who have access to improved drinking water lack access to safe drinking water due to the common practice of distributing untreated surface waters. Six million children a year, mostly under the age of five, die from lack of access to clean water and sanitation every year. These statistics have prompted the United Nations to make clean water a part of the Millennium Development Goals with the goal of reducing by half the proportion of people who have sustainable access to improved drinking water.
two approaches
- Point of Use (POU)
- Municipal Scale
We recognize that POU solutions may be the only viable option in rural communities where piped distribution systems would be too costly or where water scarcity makes managing a distribution system difficult. The AguaClara team is proposing a corrective to the emphasis on POU technologies where municipal scale treatment and distribution would be more economical, sustainable, and would better meet the needs of the poorest members of the communities.
Point of Use advocates emphasize deficiencies in municipal scale treatment and distribution systems and encourage the public to not trust tap water. The POU advocates run a significant risk of undermining public confidence and willingness to support the public commons of municipal scale treatment and distribution. As they undermine public willingness to finance municipal water supply the POU advocates run the risk that the
centralized large-scale water treatment and supply systems has proven to be a slow, expensive strategy to provide safe drinking water in many low-income countries 1.
Sophisticated technologies exist to treat water in developed countries. Also, there have been numerous innovations for products to treat water in developing countries at the individual household level. However, there is an open market for municipal-scale treatment plants that work in developing countries. There are numerous advantages to working at the municipal level including economies of scale, fewer maintenance people to train, and treating all of the water that goes into a home not just the drinking water.
Our successes:
AguaClara has already proven to be successful at treating turbid surface water on the municipal scale. Working with Agua Para el Pueblo, Honduran NGO, AguaClara has already designed two water treatment plants that are working effectively and providing safe clean water to the people of La 34 and Ojojona in Honduras. Two more plants are under construction in the towns of Marcala, and Tamara also in Honduras.
The AguaClara plants are built on site using local materials and local labor.
Show that our plants are cheaper than alternatives.
How else can we show that we have been successful?
Our goals:
Now that we have shown that our plants have been successful in Honduras we would like to expand to more municipalities in Honduras and worldwide.
We have almost completed an automated design process that would...
More discussion of goals