AguaClara Reach as it currently stands, was born out of AguaClara LLC. One of our first partners (as AC LLC) was the Tata Cornell Institute (TCI). TCI was aware of the success of AguaClara water treatment plants in Honduras and wanted to find ways to bring this state of the art technology to India.
In March of 2013, TCI and AguaClara jointly visited Jharkhand, India to meet with potential partners and visit representative communities that needed water treatment. During that visit, the team was connected to Pradan, an NGO working nationally in India on a variety of rural development projects, including community-built water supply systems. Pradan showed interest in AguaClara technologies, and together we decided to pilot our then new EStars Filters (low flow stacked rapid sand filters) to treat water supplied from lowland sanitary well at two villages - Gufu and Ronhe. Ronhe would go on to win an award from the State for being an exemplary water treatment project.
Our work with Pradan showed that while the EStars Filters were successful, Hydrodosers (automated chemical dosing system used for disinfection) were often sufficient to treat water derived from the sanitary wells. The water was already meeting WHO drinking water standards for turbidity year-round, but needed disinfection to remove waterborne pathogens. Following this, we piloted two stand alone Hydrodosers in the villages of Jolhakarma and Durgunia. Around this time, Gram Vikas was partnering with Pradan on a statewide village sanitation program and was able to see our water disinfection technology in action. They were interested in piloting the systems in the state of Odisha. We initiated the pilot in the village of Lahanda, where, seeing its potential, Gram Vikas sought to implement a plan to build their own capacity to scale the systems to as many of their partner villages as possible.
The completed Hydrodoser tower in Lahanda, India.
That initial pilot led to our most recent work with Gram Vikas and the Hydrodoser installations in Patimul and Majhi Ukhura, which were inaugurated earlier this year (previous blog posts). With the continued support of TCI, we have been able to focus not only on these installations, providing clean water to 360 people, but also on capacity building and training with Gram Vikas.
Commemoration plaque at the Majhi Ukhura Hydrodoser.
AguaClara Reach would like to extend a big thank you to the Tata Cornell Institute for supporting us early on and in our continued growth in India. Without TCI we would not have been able to position ourselves for long-term growth in Orissa or to establish in-country capacity to pilot numerous new and innovative AguaClara technologies for a variety of communities with diverse needs.
We also cannot forget those who made our early work possible: Pradan and the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust for supporting the first pilots in India in the state of Jharkhand. Additionally, we thank Tata Steel for funding the first Orissa pilot. We thank the Ithaca Rotary Club for supporting our continued efforts to build capacity in-country, and Gram Vikas for partnering with us in our long-term vision for increasing access to safe drinking water on tap globally.
We’d also like to thank several employees who were integral to our pilot work in Jharkhand: Dhaval Mehta, Sarah Long, Richa Gwalani, Guneet Sandu who helped on the ground in Jharkhand, Harrison Gill who worked from the US on the EStars design for the Jharkhand villages, and Chuck Brown and Sarah Weidel who helped at the US office home base during the Jharkhand pilots. We also want to recognize our past and current employees who have continued to scale the successes from Jharkhand to new frontiers - May Sharif, Subhani Katugampala, Emily Spiek, and Fletcher Chapin.
ACR Employee Fletcher Chapin with an inauguration banner at the Patimul Hydrodoser.
We also thank Shiulu Vanaja, a TCI scholar, for her study showing that women used the time saved in collecting drinking water in AguaClara villages was put towards other pro-health and income generating activities. Thank you all!