I am so happy and excited to report that the Health for Haiti team has successfully installed the Pall Aria AX1 microfiltration system in Grande Saline and the people in this community now have clean water to drink! Paula Stapf, Tom Collart, Esterling Accime and Joseph Johnson (JJ) have been working hard this week and were successful in starting the system tonight. My dad tells me that the people are very happy and excited about the clean water. It was a tough day, the red truck broke down and they actually hired a tap-tap to get to Grande Saline (many hours later than they had hoped). But, after a year of hard work, we have achieved our goal! Thank you to Pall Corporation for the generous donation of the AX1 system and for lending us the amazing team of Paula and Jodi, thanks to Geodis for helping us ship our equipment and for never giving up over many, many months, and thanks to our incredible Health for Haiti team! We did it!!!
The system can filter about 1,000 gallons of water each hour, and we plan to run the system for about six hours a day. This will provide enough clean water for thousands of people in the community! We have hired three members of the community to serve as operators, and Paula will continue to work with them this week to teach them how to maintain and run the system. Health for Haiti donation money will be used to pay the operators and to purchase the fuel needed to power the system. We are now raising money to purchase equipment needed to run the system with solar power. This is a very important next step in our project because gas is very expensive and hard to deliver to remote Grande Saline. I
This project started when one of our 2014 Health for Haiti students (Hannah Cempa) raised her hand in class and said, “My dad works for a company that makes water filtration systems”. Thank you to Hannah and all of our amazing Health for Haiti students for making such a difference in the world! Please see the pictures below for a look back at our project!
SUNY Broome Health for Haiti 