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...

SVN 5K: Evolution of the Automated Design Tool

The Future of the Automated Design Tool


Some years ago, AguaClara program director Monroe Weber-Shirk was asked when the Automated Design Tool would be capable of producing completed designs. He responded by saying it should be "pretty perfect" by revision 10,000. As the future design team leader at the time, I decided the design team would make it well beyond halfway to "pretty perfect" before revision 5,000.

8th AguaClara Plant Inaugurated

Yesterday on a small knoll on the outskirts of Atima, Santa Barbara in Honduras, a crowd gathered to celebrate the inauguration of the 8th AguaClara water treatment plant. There were speeches by Jacobo Nuñez of Agua Para el Pueblo, Rotarians from Baltimore and from Santa Barbara, and the mayor of Atima. Town residents toured the new water treatment plant and all enjoyed a celebratory meal together.

Jacobo Nuñez demonstrates the difference between the
dirty water entering the plant and the safe drinking water
produced by the plant.

The Atima project was several years in the making. An early potential bilateral donor turned down the project in part because the AguaClara plants don't use electricity and the bilateral donor thought that since Atima has electricity that we should use their "locally available materials". (Including electricity...). Eventually Dan Smith made connections with Rotarians and that turned into a strong relationship. The Rotarians funded the project, Atima provided labor and local materials, Agua Para el Pueblo provided the local design, construction supervision and capacity building, and AguaClara at Cornell provided the plant design. A partnership that is truly win-win-win-win with everyone contributing what they can and together doing what no one could do alone.
Atima marks a transition for the AguaClara program. AguaClara water treatment plants now produce over 100 L/s (more than 3.5 billion liters per year) and serve over 30,000 people. AguaClara is now a significant player in the world of safe drinking water. And AguaClara has technical capabilities that give us an unparalleled opportunity to scale up.

For the last seven years AguaClara has been synonymous with innovation. We've developed a whole suite of technologies and every plant that was built included multiple innovations. We used the power of feedback to drive continual improvements in our technologies and our implementation methods. AguaClara facilities were built at the rate of about 1 per year and even at that pace it was challenging to update our designs to include the new technologies for each new plant. I remember in 2007 when we were designing both Tamara and the retrofit plant at Marcala and the design team clearly stating that designing two plants in one year was too much. Since then the design team has developed amazing scalable design capabilities with our automated design tool. Beginning a few months ago we now maintain a stock of standard designs ready for use by implementation partners.

Atima marks the transition from full focus on technology development to a shared focus on deployment of the AguaClara technologies. Atima will likely be the last AguaClara plant to be built without a stacked rapid sand filter. Of course, innovation and technology development will continue! We have many years of productive research ahead to optimize plant performance and reduce construction costs. But now we have a new focus on taking the technology to scale.

We have an opportunity for a friendly competition between implementation partners. Where will the 9th AguaClara plant be built and who will build it? The 9th plant could be built in Colombia by AguaNova, in Guatemala under supervision of INFOM, in Nicaragua by CARE, In Ethiopia by Bahir Dar University, or in Honduras by Agua Para el Pueblo.

Help us take AguaClara to this new level where we methodically add new implementation partners who can build AguaClara plants.