Clean Water and Environment

Clean Water Committee

In each community, we work with a local Clean Water and Environment Committee. If none exists, the community must organize one that represents its residents.

We train and advise them on how to communicate effectively with fellow residents and with their local officials.

We work with each committee to make a work plan and coordinate all clean water activities.

Each committee trains households in filter maintenance, plants trees, organizes trash pick-up and recycling, develops organic gardens, raises awareness about environment management, and organizes other activities.

Water Testing

We work with each Water and Environment Committee to coordinate testing by local health clinics of the water sources for contamination. 

We also coordinate the testing of family members for ingestion of amoebas, bacteria and parasites. 

We use this information to educate the community on the risk level and the costs and consequences of waterborne illnesses. This data also serves as a baseline.

The CIS began to work on the issue of clean water with Isla El Espíritu Santo (the Holy Spirit Island) in 2008 when they told us that many of the children and adults were severely ill with dysentery due to contaminated water.  We had been working there since the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 -- with the support of CIS partner St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New Hampshire -- to help women organize a microenterprise to raise and sell pigs and, later, another cooperative to make candy.

We learned about the complicated problem of contaminated water and researched what kind of filters would be effective. After distributing some filters, we observed some families using their buckets with the filters for their hens to lay eggs in. Why? Because having a place for their hens to lay eggs was a more immediate need. They knew their water was contaminated, but they had accommodated to that reality their whole lives.

This taught us early on that access to clean water would take both providing filters and raising awareness to change people’s habits.

Like we know from all of CIS solidarity work, simple charity or hand-outs are not enough; the community needs to empower itself with new knowledge, skills, and an ability to organize in order to have a transformative impact.  

The first filters we found accessible were clay filters which we purchased from another non-profit working on water. We took them out to the island, did training, and we thought we were set.

Later we had a group of science students from Loyola University in Los Angeles visit.  They tested the water samples before and after it was filtered, only to find that the sand filtration system in the clay filters if not changed regularly through a complicated process resulted in the water actually being more contaminated than before the filtration process.  

After a couple of years trying and testing the use of water filters, two delegations of CIS partners – Sister Susan Dewitt from PeaceHealth and Jean Stemmermann, then of St. Patrick’s Church in Kansas City -- both happened to bring a donation of Sawyer home water filters. Recent tests of water samples of households using the original clay filters -- which we carried out in collaboration with science students from Loyola University in Los Angeles -- had shown that the sand filtration system of the clay filters could actually result in higher levels of contamination when not changed regularly (a complicated process).  

So, we were searching for a new filter system to replace the old. We did several professional lab tests on these new Sawyer filters where they proved effective. Then, we began to distribute filters to various communities and our Clean Water Campaign became CIS Clean Water and Environment Program!

We found the filters were easy to use and durable, they needed no replacement parts, and they worked!