Clean Water and Sanitation Come to Honduras

A four-year effort to bring water and sanitation to some 350,000 people in a remote district of Honduras is wrapping up, and medical tests show the $4.7-million effort has dramatically reduced the incidence of water-borne illnesses and parasites. Project SafeWater Colon includes the design and construction of 229 projects to bring water and sanitation to the Honduran District of Colon, including construction of some 15,000 latrines. George Green IV, vice president of Water Missions International (WMI), a nonprofit, faith-based engineering organization that managed the project, says virtually everyone in the poverty-stricken district now has access to clean water and sanitation. That wasn't the situation in 2006 when the Pentair Foundation donated $4.7 million to provide basic services through Project SafeWater. At that time, the Honduran government reported 34% of the district's people lacked access to safe drinking water and 43% lacked proper sanitation. Independent testing found those numbers dramatically low, reporting that 100% of the Colon's population lacked a source of clean drinking water. Virtually every water source had high counts of coliform bacteria, indicating fecal contamination.