News from Haiti: September 2009

New Urban Clean Water System Demonstrated in Haiti

The first urban chlorination system designed for developing countries is operating in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, announced Andrew Weiss at the Clinton Global initiative meeting in New York City today. "It's a great success," said Weiss.

"Installed on 150 public water tanks in Haiti’s capital city, the chlorination big city system is supplying 400,000 residents with clean, safe water. This is the first time Haitians have had access to clean water for cooking and drinking," commented Weiss, a Board member of the non-profit group, International Action which installed the chlorinators.

Weiss described the clean water system as a two-foot tube holding 20 tablets of chlorine through which water passes into a neighborhood water tank. Simple test kits allow the local operator to measure how much chlorine is dissolved and to regulate the flow.

"This is a neighborhood system," said Andrew Weiss, "simple enough to be run by local groups and sophisticated enough to clean the water for 10,000 users. A twice-larger version of the chlorinator can make water safe for 50,000 people. We have several of the larger chlorinators operating in Port-au-Prince and more than 100 of the smaller ones."

Both devices are made by the NORWECO Company of Norwalk, Ohio and the chlorine tablets come from the Arch Chemical Company of Norwalk, Connecticut. "The small chlorinator costs $40 and the larger one $120 and the tablets are $50 per month to serve 50,000 people in Haiti," said Weiss.

"International Action hopes to distribute this clean water system to cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America," said Weiss for the group. "Currently, no one else has a system to treat urban neighborhood water tanks in poor countries, and our system is designed for this purpose.

"The tablet chlorinators will become a major breakthrough technology in public health," predicted Weiss. "Waterborne diseases – cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, and chronic diarrhea – are the major cause of infant and child mortality today. Our chlorine kills these disease germs in water," he stated.

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