Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project

On January 2, 2010, IARP met with the Muslim Peacemaker Teams, PureWater for All Foundation, and Outreach Africa Medical Missions to discuss a new water sterilization unit. As part of IARP’s Water for Peace program, IARP and MPT are exploring this unit as a cost-effective way to provide clean water to Iraqi schools with no current access to safe water.

Background

• Lack of clean water is one of the largest threats to the health of Iraqis today. Over 60% of Iraqis don’t have access to clean drinking water. People are dying everyday from water borne diseases.  An estimated 200 children die everyday from water related illnesses.
• The goal of this meeting was to work towards finding a means to solve this problem.
• John Hays and Paul Milloy invented and implemented a water sanitation system in some of the harshest environments around the world.
• MPT & IARP run a program called Water for Peace, providing schools and hospitals with clean water systems to provide children with clean, drinkable water.

Presentation of the water sterilization unit
This unit creates chlorine which can be added to any water to sterilize it for consumption.

Unit is composed of: 12-volt battery, chlorine generator with cables, solar panel to charge battery, salt, bottles. Note: other batteries can be used, e.g. motorcycle, car, etc.

Steps:
1. Create salt water: Dissolve 4 teaspoons salt into 1 liter water. Amount of salt is flexible.
2. Connect battery to chlorine generator. Black to black and red to red.
3. Pour saltwater through chlorine generator 4 times to make chlorine.

DONATE to Water for Peace

For more information on Water for Peace, please visit the Water for Peace section or contact Mika Thuening, Water for Peace Director, at Mika at reconciliationproject.org.

Important note: Look for bubbles rising from the generator. If the bubbles are not present, than something is wrong and the saltwater is not being converted to chlorine. Check for bad connection, dead battery, or the generator may need cleaning. Battery can be charged with the solar panel. It should run for 20 hours when fully charged. To clean generator: Run soda through it, or hook up the alternate charges.

4. Add chlorine to contaminated water and let stand for at least one hour. Three drops for one 8 oz. glass. One liter of chlorine can clean 500 liters of water. Adjust amount of chlorine as needed depending on the level of contamination.

5. Use test strips to check the chlorine level in the sterilized water. Ideal level should match color 1.0

Retail price of unit: $250

Benefits

• To operate the unit only needs common table salt, an affordable and accessible good around the world. It has no moving parts and the generator is composed of the strongest metal, therefore it needs little maintenance, and will not break. It only needs cleaning once a week.
• Clean water will be safe to drink for one week if covered. If left uncovered, it will be safe for 24 hours. Unlike other methods of sterilization, chlorine water carries a residual. This means that if a contaminant enters the drinking water, the chlorine will kill the bacteria and the water is still safe to drink.
• This method can be converted to serve various amounts of people, from one family to entire cities. John used this chlorine method to sterilize public drinking water in cities around the U.S.. Chlorine sterilization has been used around the U.S. for a hundred years and is proven safe and effective.

Successes

• After the unit was given to a family on El Salvador, it was used to sterilize water for 12 families. Upon its success, a neighboring community of 3,000 is asking for a unit.
• Some communities have used this as an entrepreneurial opportunity. The water can be created and sold locally. Additionally, many of the parts of the unit can be produced locally. In whole, the unit is locally sustainable and can be a tool for local economic growth.
• After several successful projects around Tanzania, the governor of the state asked John and Paul to implement the system nation wide.

Conclusion

Sami believes that this system is a great option for attaining clean drinking water for Iraq. John gifted a water filtration unit to Sami.  Sami will test it in Iraq and assess possibilities for this unit’s implementation in homes and for the larger community. Continued communication will have to address the possible obstacle of shipment of units to Iraq.