CTI

The fact that unsafe water kills more people each year than all forms of violence (including war) is appalling. But the fact that there are plenty of affordable and effective water treatment solutions makes these deaths a tragedy.

One of the challenges of eradicating waterborne illness in the developing world is that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. What works well in one community isn’t going to be appropriate in another. Take CTI’s water chlorinator, for instance. Our chlorinator is designed to provide safe water for a community; it attaches to a gravity-fed water source that an entire village obtains its water from, like a water tank. In Nicaragua, where community water tanks are common, CTI Water Chlorinators provide safe water to over 150,000 people. But there are many parts of the world where families obtain water from less centralized sources, like nearby streams or lakes. For these families, CTI’s Water Chlorinator isn’t going to be much help.

In search of a small-scale water solution

To help individual families treat their water, CTI is exploring a smaller-scale water filtration system that can provide safe water for 8-10 people and meet the following criteria:

• Affordable
• Portable
• Does not require electricity
• Must produce safe drinking water within 2 hours
• Must produce a minimum of 15 gallons per day
• Must be certified as to its efficacy against waterborne pathogens
•  Must be easy to clean

We aren’t seeking to reinvent the wheel, so CTI’s water team has researched numerous technologies on the market that either meet the above criteria, or can be adapted. We’ve narrowed our focus on the Sawyer Water filter. We like the filter because it’s very affordable and it works exceptionally. Like most water treatment technologies, the filter does require occasional cleaning. Without cleaning, the water’s flow rate begins to decrease over time as the filter collects contaminates. In order to make the system easier for families to clean, we’ve permanently connected a backflush device that returns the filter to its optimal flow rate.

Testing in Nicaragua

Testing in Senegal

Field Testing in Senegal and Nicaragua

Two Prototype units are currently being field tested in Nicaragua and Senegal for flow capacity and ease of use. Thus far, feedback on performance has been consistently excellent. Users have reported the prototypes are effective, intuitive to use, and their rate of output is quite satisfactory. If the initial field tests continue to go well, CTI will likely explore wider distribution of the systems.

Siblings do the washing at Acopia San Francisco Uca, a major coffee plantation and wholesaler in Nicaragua. Behind them, community members build a CTI water chlorinator.

In rural Nicaragua, seasonal workers and their families travel long distances to work on coffee, corn and cocoa plantations for months at a time. The money they earn during this period is essential to their families’ welfare, but the lack of safe drinking water at plantations often causes serious illness—preventing seasonal workers from going to work and devastating families.

Access to safe water not only improves community health, it increases incomes too. In fact, every $1 invested in improved water and sanitation yields an average of $4-12 for the local economy.

Because communities ability to earn money is so dependent on safe water, many plantations in Nicaragua are installing CTI’s Water Chlorinator. We are currently providing safe water to more than 12,000 seasonal workers in Nicaragua. With access to safe water, parents can earn wages, kids can attend school, and families in general have better lives.

We are happy to report that we are now providing safe drinking water to more than 110,000 people in Nicaragua!

In the last year, CTI has more than doubled the number of people we are providing with a sustainable, community-run source of clean water. But our work’s not done yet. By this time next year, we want to double that number again, and then some. CTI has set the goal of proving a quarter of a million people with clean water by this time next year. We hope you will help us meet this ambitious target.

Recently, we surveyed the Nicaraguan communities that are using our water chlorination technology. Here’s what we learned:

• The communities are maintaining their systems, with 81% reporting at least monthly cleaning and 90% reporting monthly visual inspection.
•  The CTI Water Chlorinator is affordable. 93% of respondents “definitely agree” the price paid for the Water Chlorinators (about $100 USD) was worth the value created.
•  Villages are healthier. 60% of respondents report ‘significant’ reductions in gastrointestinal illness, with another 24% reporting some reduction. The remaining 16% did not see beneficial reductions; some of which may be related to overall poor health practices.
•  The villagers are happy. 82% would recommend the chlorinator ‘without reservation’ and 100% declare the system should be installed in every water system in Nicaragua.

According to the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report, close to half of all people in developing countries are suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits. For children under age five, water-related diseases are the leading causes of death with1.8 million children dying each year from diarrhea – 4,900 deaths each day. The World Health Organization has stated that no intervention has greater overall impact upon national development and public health than the provision of safe drinking water and the proper disposal of human waste. 

Compatible Technology International began development of a water chlorinator in 2002 after being contacted by the Nicaraguan government for help in correcting the badly contaminated water systems in the rural areas of that country.  The CTI 8 is a simple, unique water chlorinator(see photo below) that focuses on delivering clean water to rural communities with low to medium flow water systems that do not have access to water treatment or electricity, and have minimal economic resources.  Most water systems are designed for larger communities and are more costly to implement.  

The CTI 8 Water Chlorinator was initially installed in about 30 communities in Nicaragua under the direct supervision of Nicaraguan Water Ministry personnel. Unfortunately, a combination of issues arose that caused the water project to stall for a couple of years.  We were unable to obtain the necessary chlorine tablets and the Nicaraguan Water Ministry disbanded the office which had been supervising the CTI 8 installations. 

In 2009 CTI restarted the Water Chlorinator Project with the help of the Nicaragua Department of Health, who has committed their hygienists, employed by the Department of Health, to participate in this project at the Department’s expense. CTI has contracted with an epidemiologist in Nicaragua to restart the project.  He has visited all of the original installations and was pleasantly surprised to find that the vast majority of them had been maintained by the original water committees and were just waiting for the necessary chlorine tablets to make them operational once again. 

In addition to the CTI representative, the hygienists will be a valuable component of the project, as they live in the municipalities, know the rural communities, work in health in those communities, and have community health education around water as part of their responsibilities. The distance and location of the chlorinators in rural communities make the use of the hygienists important, as they are able to monitor the chlorinator installations as part of their daily work, eliminating the need for difficult and constant travel to monitor the installations.  While we are actively searching for a chlorine tablet supplier in Central America, a shipment of tablets was delivered from the US this month and we are awaiting word that at least some of the installations have been reactivated. 

The intent is to have this project be self sustaining within a year through the sale of the chlorine tablets and chlorinator systems, but until that time we are continuing to seek funds to support the work we are doing in Nicaragua. 

In early 2002, the Nicaraguan government contacted CTI and asked us to investigate the possibility of correcting the badly contaminated water systems in the rural areas of that country.  CTI responded by engaging Americas Committee volunteers Fred Jacob (noted community organizer with a Nicaraguan NGO) and Charles Taflin (Senior Engineer with the Minneapolis Water Department) to design and implement a water disinfection system.  Thus, the CTI 8 water chlorinator was created.

The chlorinator was initially installed in about 30 communities in Nicaragua under the direct supervision of Nicaraguan Water Ministry personnel.  This simple chlorinator allows the people and communities where it is installed to have access to disinfected drinking water for pennies per day.  Unfortunately, due to political issues in Nicaragua, the dissolution of the Nicaraguan Water Ministry, and challenges securing appropriate chlorine tablets, the project has been less active than desirable the last few years.

However, in recent months, the National Health Ministry has been given jurisdiction over rural water and has been in communication with CTI to reinstate the water chlorinator program.  That, along with a recent breakthrough in obtaining the proper chlorine tablets, prompted Fred Jacob to visit Nicaragua last month where he checked on the chlorinators that had been installed by CTI a few years ago.  What he found was encouraging!  Fred reports, ”It was heartwarming to see that most of the chlorinators and water systems were in acceptable to wonderful condition!”

CTI is actively forging ahead with this project and is working towards the goal of making 50 chlorinators fully operational within 90 days!