North Shore Rotarians take filtering battle international

In an effort to curb disease and douse parts of an impoverished nation with clean, filtered drinking water, 20 Rotarians from the North Shore departed to Honduras with sunscreen in their pockets and water on their minds, but these volunteers were not signing up to sit at the beach. Instead these Rotarians, in a partnership with Clean Water for the World, spent a week in La Ceiba to install water filters in the homes of villagers in a small, agricultural town located on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.Rotarian and Swampscott resident Heidi Whear said that 15 water filtration systems were installed in homes during their weeklong trip in April, but reiterated that they have enough grant money to install approximately 1,700 water filtration systems throughout the rural areas of the country.Whear said they could only install a certain number of units a day because each filtration system weighs approximately 300 pounds.”When you are carrying water filters up to rural, mountainous areas it is difficult to install a lot of them in one day,” she said. “Each filtration system is about the size of a water cooler and consists of a concrete base that is fitted with sand and then enclosed with a steel cover.”According to Whear, the water is poured into the filter and then goes through a layer of sand before flowing into a bucket by way of a PVC pipe system.”There is no simpler technology, but in order for the filter to continue to work correctly it needs to be used consistently or it will dry out and be ineffective” Whear said. “The filtration system kills about 98 percent of the pathogens in the water.”Whear said the need for water filtration systems arose because many villagers get their water from the same river that contains cattle waste. When this occurs, the villagers are constantly sick from drinking the tainted water.”We provided the villagers with medication that will kill the worms that are living within the body of each villager,” she said.”We received $120,000 from the Rotary International and that was part of a two year grant partnership with the La Ceiba Rotary there in Honduras,” said Whear, who holds a Master’s degree in Public Health.”Throughout the world, the basis of good health is access to clean, safe drinking water,” said Carolyn Crowley Meub, the executive director for Pure Water for the World. “Experts say that unsanitary water is responsible for about 80 percent of all diseases in developing countries. For most of the world, clean water is medicine.”Whear said she and her husband Bruce began to think about ways to provide safe drinking water to remote villages in Honduras after visiting the country three years ago.”Three years ago, while in the rain forest of Honduras, Bruce and I began to dream about helping bring safe drinking water to remote villages,” said Whear. “This trip made a huge difference in the lives of Hondurans who will now have clean water to drink.”Whear also spoke highly of the other 19 people who traveled to Honduras to work on this daunting task.”These Rotarians and volunteers are using their vacation time and taking the time off, paying for their transportation and lodging,” she said. “All funds raised go directly to the filters and project.”Amy Luckiewicz, an officer of the Wakefield Rotary Club, said that the best part of the trip was “to be able to bring a direct impact right away.”Rotarian for Life and Marblehead resident Peter Reardon said that he originally got involved with the Rotarians because of this project in La Ceiba.Reardon also took his 18-year-old daughter Chelsey on the trip as a way to “show her how the rest of the world lived.””The family vacation to the beach is extinct in our family because this is much more fulfilling than traveling somewhere to sit on a beach,” said Reardon.Reardon recalled a moment some years ago when Rotarian District Governor Dave Fionda said that the goal of each Rotarian is “to create a Rotary moment: a moment to realize the incredible power that each