How Michigan Businesses and Organizations have an impact around the world.
Aqua Clara International
- Puerto Rico - Lares
Creating Science-Based technologies for Effective, Affordable, Sustainable Water Purifications
Scientists long ago discovered how to purify unsafe water. To us, the central issue has been in designing solutions that are both sustainable and scalable and that can reach the millions in need while at the same time continuing to function without sustained outside input. We are a 501(c)3 non-profit and our target populations are those individuals and families who live on $2 per day or less.
ACI Builds HHFs in Puerto Rico - Lares, PR June 2021
In June 2021, ACI traveled to central Puerto Rico to perform a much delayed filter-build. As things on the island have been going through changes and repairs, many due to Hurricane Maria still, several town's water supplies are still cut off frequently due to power outages and other infrastructure shortages. Jay VandenBrink and Tamara VanderKuyl of ACI traveled down to meet with the Presbyterian Church of the town of Lares, Puerto Rico. As they arrived with a van full of buckets for several hundred ACI 2-Bucket Household Filters (2B HHFs), many buckets already donated by the church had already been worked on by local leaders of surrounding areas and members of the church.
The filters themselves had arrived earlier in the year, but due to covid-19 restrictions, only the families needing them most were able to receive their filters. Now in the town of Lares, 220 filters have been built and the final ones being distributed to families. Rev. Danilie Hilerio-Villanueva, head of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) on the island, has helped us pinpoint areas that need the filters the most. Thanks to Herman Miller and Rotary International - Grand Rapids, these families could get these filters. The areas of focus so far with this initiative have been San Sebastian and Lares and their surrounding areas, which started in 2018. Both rural mountainous towns that still struggle with getting adequate resources.
As mentioned, many of these towns have their water turned off several times a week. When the water is turned off, poorer families whom cannot afford clean water are forced to use contaminated river water and rain water. Many illnesses have been spread because of this. Also, with the water being turned on and off, the residents of the entire area no longer trust their once potable city water due to contaminated piping. Supplying healthy clean-water to areas that do not have access to any has always been our goal, but preventing plastic pollution and giving solutions to other wasteful behaviors is our goal, too. As hurricane season is upon the island, these hundreds of families with ACI 2B HHFs now have a source of 99.999% sans pathogens, clean drinking-water for their children and relatives to consume at all time.
Puerto Rico for MCDC
- Challenges - Receiving grant funding to further provide vulnerable towns that need water filters before the next hurricane arrives.
- Benefits - Partnered with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Rotary International and Herman Miller to supply 1000s of filters to towns hit by hurricanes Maria and Fionia. Saved several lives because water was cut off for 2+ months and families were able to filter rain and river water to survive. Many roads were washed away and these towns were not reachable. Water filters need to be in homes before such happens.
- Community Served - West/Central Puerto Rico in areas hit hardest by hurricane Maria. Lares is a town that had over 20 landslides with hurricane Maria. We distrusted 100s of filters through the Presbyterian Church there. Volunteers helped build these filters and distribute them to the people who needed them most, sick, elderly etc. These filters were donated through a grant with the Herman Miller Foundation (now MillerKnoll). Hurricane Fiona then arrived, and we knew these people had potable water and were ready for recovery from the storm.
