To understand the story of AguaClara you’ll have to go back a lot further than 2017, all the way back to 1980. That’s when Monroe Weber-Shirk first visited Honduras to assist refugees fleeing the El Salvadoran civil war.

When he returned to the US, Weber-Shirk didn’t forget Honduras. After receiving his PhD in Environmental Engineering he focused his research on large-scale, affordable municipal water treatment systems. The resulting full-scale AguaClara plant is entirely gravity-powered and constructed of locally sourced materials.

In 2005, Weber-Shirk formed AguaClara at Cornell as an engineering project team focused on designing scaleable, sustainable, gravity-powered, locally-sourced water treatment solutions.

That same year, the first of these plants was constructed in Ojojona, Honduras. Since then, 18(?) other water treatment facilities have been built in Honduras, Nicaragua, and India.

The project team at Cornell is still going strong with over 80 students. They have improved nearly every aspect of the full-scale plant design over the last decade+, and created standalone technologies like the PF 300 and hydrodoser. They are also creating an open-source design engine which will create parameterized models of AC technology for distribution to implementation partners and the general public.

However, AguaClara Cornell is focused on their research, so they need help in finding and educating new implementation partners. Since our first hydrodoser in 2017, ACR has now overseen 4 successful AguaClara technology implementations performed by our partner Gram Vikas.

ACR hopes to expand on the promising partnership with Gram Vikas in India. We also look to expand to new countries with new partners.