The Floc Blanket Quest

AguaClara has a mission of creating high quality safe drinking water using sustainable, low cost water treatment plants. Since 2008, we have been researching and attempting to add floc blankets to our suite of safe drinking water technologies. A floc blanket is a fluidized bed of flocs that are maintained in the bottom of an upflow sedimentation tank. It looks like a snow globe with too much snow. The highly concentrated suspension acts like a filter (or flocculator) that intercepts incoming clay particles and thus reduces the turbidity of the settled water. The performance improvement created by a floc blanket can be quite dramatic. The settled water turbidity can be reduced by a factor of 10, for example, from 3 NTU to 0.3 NTU. Our goal was to add the floc blanket without significantly increasing the cost of an AguaClara plant. Last week Drew Hart confirmed that we have floc blankets at the new AguaClara plant in Atima! The water in the top of the sedimentation tanks is crystal clear!

Announcing a New Open Data Project

Our new SMS-based data reporting program is in its pilot stage in Honduras

Lack of reliable, up-to-date data on critical infrastructure has always been a serious roadblock in the path of development. Anecdotes might make great PR pieces, but ultimately decisions - which program to fund, which technology to employ, which community's technicians need training - are based on data. A dearth of trustworthy data makes planning more difficult and more arbitrary, with unpredictable results.

AguaClara is like this summer rain

I'm sitting outside on my deck in a long awaited thunderstorm watching a hummingbird feast on our flowers. A few hours earlier I had corn on the cob from a local farm through a connection facilitated by our local grocery store. I'm feeling rather lucky. Perhaps in this game of life where a good summer day is defined by a gentle thunderstorm, a hummingbird, and corn on the cob; I'm winning and as far as I can tell, there are few losers. Of course, there are some in Ithaca who had to adjust their outdoor plans to compensate for the rain. A small "loss" for the good of the parched earth that has been waiting for rain for weeks.

Alissa's story

We recently asked AguaClara alumni to share reflections on their involvement with AguaClara and how it has influenced them. I asked Alissa Diminich if I could pass along some of her reflections. Alissa rose through the ranks of the AguaClara team in the early days when we were developing our design approaches. Alissa tells the story best...