{"id":433278,"date":"2010-03-16T05:00:11","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T09:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxfam.org.uk\/applications\/blogs\/pressoffice\/?p=11526"},"modified":"2010-03-16T05:00:11","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T09:00:11","slug":"water-arrives-at-impasse-fouget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/433278","title":{"rendered":"Water arrives at Impasse Fouget"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Haiti, Oxfam\u2019s job isn’t just providing water, but working together with the local people who’ll be drinking it, our staff are ensuring its ongoing quality. Oxfam humanitarian response specialist Kenny Rae is currently in Haiti working on the recovery effort. <\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\"Tom<\/a><\/p>\n
Tom Mahin, in blue shirt, helps set up a tapstand with five drinking taps, which draws clean water from an Oxfam water bladder. Photo: Kenny Rae\/Oxfam America<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Six months ago, Tom Mahin\u2019s focus was figuring out how to improve the quality of drinking water in the Massachusetts city of Gloucester<\/a>. The city’s 30,000 residents had been told to boil their tap water before drinking it due to high levels of harmful bacteria. Mahin is a drinking water specialist with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and is working as an advisor to Oxfam America in Haiti.<\/p>\n

Because of the urgent need, Oxfam chose this camp to be the first to receive one of ten bladders \u2014 rubber tanks resembling big pillows \u2014 that hold about 2,900 gallons of water each. Until now the 1,482 people in this densely populated location close to the city centre were venturing out as far as a kilometre for drinking water. Today, for the first time since the earthquake on 12 January, 340 displaced families in Impasse Fouget, Port-au-Prince, have safe drinking water, thanks to Mahin and Haitian engineer Donald St. Preux.<\/p>\n

Oxfam\u2019s job is not only to provide water, but to ensure its quality, all with the participation of the people who will be drinking it.<\/p>\n

How to build a ten tonne water bladder<\/strong><\/p>\n

At Impasse Fouget, our first task was to build a large platform with rubble, rocks, and earth on which the bladder would rest. A bladder like this, filled with water, weighs ten tonnes, so the platform has to be well constructed\u2013a task that community members took on, with no request for payment. A flexible pipe running to a set of five outdoor taps carries the water from bladder down to where people can collect it.<\/p>\n

Chlorinating water ensures its safety \u2014 and Oxfam works to reinforce that idea through hygiene promotion activities in the camps. When a delivery truck comes to fill the bladder, chlorine is added, a responsibility we have given to local users who have selected a water committee to carry it out. Mahin provides bottles of a 1% chlorine solution (quite safe \u2014 household bleach is six percent) to a committee member who adds it to the bladder. An\u00a0Oxfam engineer, working with the same handheld meter used by water authorities in the US, monitors the chlorine level to determine whether it\u2019s appropriate, and can adjust the concentration if necessary.<\/p>\n

Oxfam is working in camps of many sizes<\/a>, from a few hundred people to many thousands. Our team\u2019s focus is on 35 smaller encampments in the Delmas district. Between 200 and 2,100 people might reside in each. Working at this scale makes our community-based approach for chlorination effective.<\/p>\n

A test of the water emerging from the tank at Impasse Fouget showed an acceptable residual chlorine level of 2mg\/litre \u2014 enough to ensure any bugs in the water would be killed, but not enough to be tasted except by the most sensitive palate.<\/p>\n

Mahin\u2019s with us for a couple of weeks, and by the time he returns to Boston he will have helped to bring safe water to more than 12,000 people \u2014 almost half the number who live in Gloucester.<\/p>\n

Find out more about Oxfam\u2019s Haiti Earthquake response<\/a><\/p>\n

This article was originally posted on the Oxfam America blog<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Haiti, Oxfam\u2019s job isn’t just providing water, but working together with the local people who’ll be drinking it, our staff are ensuring its ongoing quality. Oxfam humanitarian response specialist Kenny Rae is currently in Haiti working on the recovery effort. Tom Mahin, in blue shirt, helps set up a tapstand with five drinking taps, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5887,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5887"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}