Hurricane Matthew brought destructive winds and rain to Haiti when it hit the island nation in early October. The second punch was an outbreak of cholera, spread by contaminated water, which continues to plague the southern part of the country. Mario Andre of Vermont-based Pure Water for the World traveled to the hard-hit southern port city of Les Cayes last week to distribute emergency supplies. He was overwhelmed. "We only had enough chlorine tablets and buckets for 50 families, but 500 showed up," the organization's field director explained by phone from Haiti. "What I witnessed is the desperation of the people. "Clean water is life. That's our motto," Andre said of the nonprofit's goal to bring safe water to Central America and the Caribbean. Since it was founded in 1999, Pure Water has raised millions of dollars to distribute home water-filtration systems to residents of Haiti, Honduras and other countries that lack consistently safe water supplies. The Rutland-based organization also leads education in schools and municipalities on hand washing, sanitation techniques and other measures that help reduce the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera. It responds to emergencies, such as the disaster-aid effort in Les Cayes, and is involved in building water infrastructure, including a gravity-set mountain pipeline project under way in rural Honduras. But the bulk of Pure Water's work is to provide families with biosand water-filtering kits, which help remove bacteria, pathogens and suspended solids using a straightforward system of buckets, gravel and sand. The raw materials to build each filter cost about $80. With the education on use and repairs that Pure Water provides, the total cost per unit comes to about $300. Many of the people the nonprofit helps live in deeply impoverished rural areas without municipal sewer and water purification systems, or the means to install safe home wells and septic systems. Some draw water directly from rivers where people wash clothes, bathe and defecate; others collect it in cisterns that contain residue from bird droppings and dead animals, or shallow ground wells that are contaminated by pollutants and bacteria. Truck-delivered water is for sale in some of the communities where Pure Water works, but it isn't always clean and many people can't afford to pay the price. The beauty of biosand filter technology, which is used in many developing countries, is that it's relatively easy for people to maintain once they've…
Hurricane Matthew brought destructive winds and rain to Haiti when it hit the island nation in early October. The second punch was an outbreak of cholera, spread by contaminated water, which continues to plague the southern part of the country. Mario Andre of Vermont-based Pure Water for the World traveled to the hard-hit southern port city of Les Cayes last week to distribute emergency supplies. He was overwhelmed. "We only had enough chlorine tablets and buckets for 50 families, but 500 showed up," the organization's field director explained by phone from Haiti. "What I witnessed is the desperation of the people. "Clean water is life. That's our motto," Andre said of the nonprofit's goal to bring safe water to Central America and the Caribbean. Since it was founded in 1999, Pure Water has raised millions of dollars to distribute home water-filtration systems to residents of Haiti, Honduras and other countries that lack consistently safe water supplies. The Rutland-based organization also leads education in schools and municipalities on hand washing, sanitation techniques and other measures that help reduce the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera. It responds to emergencies, such as the disaster-aid effort in Les Cayes, and is involved in building water infrastructure, including a gravity-set mountain pipeline project under way in rural Honduras. But the bulk of Pure Water's work is to provide families with biosand water-filtering kits, which help remove bacteria, pathogens and suspended solids using a straightforward system of buckets, gravel and sand. The raw materials to build each filter cost about $80. With the education on use and repairs that Pure Water provides, the total cost per unit comes to about $300. Many of the people the nonprofit helps live in deeply impoverished rural areas without municipal sewer and water purification systems, or the means to install safe home wells and septic systems. Some draw water directly from rivers where people wash clothes, bathe and defecate; others collect it in cisterns that contain residue from bird droppings and dead animals, or shallow ground wells that are contaminated by pollutants and bacteria. Truck-delivered water is for sale in some of the communities where Pure Water works, but it isn't always clean and many people can't afford to pay the price. The beauty of biosand filter technology, which is used in many developing countries, is that it's relatively easy for people to maintain once they've…