Filters and CTUs to La Fragosa!

This week, after 4 months of planning and organizing, we finally delivered the ceramic filters and CTU tanks to La Fragosa!  By this point you’ve read all about the project so I’ll let the pictures do the talking…

Expert packing job

Community members and ADEC tecnico

Enough sitting around...get to work!

Repairing the water line to the school

Charla on cleaning and maintaining the filters (each filter comes in a bucket with a lid)

Happy customers! Community members paid around $5 for the filter and ADEC subsidized the other $15.

Time to learn about the Combined Treatment Units

Practicing with the tanks. In the top tank Aluminum Sulfate is added to the raw water, after 20 minutes of mixing the sediment unites and sinks to the bottom of the tank. The water can then be passed to the lower tank for chlorination.

Josue demonstrating how to test for chlorine

David and I with the Patronato and Junta members, and the adorable gemelitas (twins).

So there you have it!  In the end, 29 (of about 35)  families ordered filters! We padded the order to include 3 extra filters – which were immediately bought bringing the total to 32 filters – that’s about 90% community participation!  Not too shabby!

From here we will begin the education and monitoring phase.  Over the next year we will be giving charlas in the school, continuing to train the newly formed Junta, monitoring the use of the CTU, and making house calls to check on the filter usage.  There is still plenty to do but it feels really good to have the filters in the community!  Thanks to ADEC and Fred for backing us in this project!