To address these types of water-quality issues, Purdue launched a new service learning class in the fall of 2012. Ernest Blatchley, professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering, says the class has operated as a hybrid learning setting involving conventional classroom lectures, laboratory-based experiments, field measurements and surveys. He serves as the project’s director.

Six students and faculty members recently returned from their fourth trip to Las Canas, a community in the Dominican Republic. They completed work on a system that uses sand filtration, low-pressure membrane filtration and chlorination to make safe drinking water available to the residents.

“When properly operated, the system we developed and installed in Las Canas will yield water that will consistently meet the World Health Organization’s standard for E. coli and other potable water indicators,” Blatchley says.

Las Canas was selected as the location for a pilot system based on communications with project partners. This experience will help shape further efforts in designing, building and using such systems to address this global challenge.

Water tanks as installed at the Ana Julia School. Water that has passed through the sand filter and the microfiltration system is directed to these two tanks. Chlorine is added as liquid chlorine bleach to each tank. Finished water is produced in a batch mode of operation.

Hands-on learning

To raise funds to support the cost of the trips, construction of the system and acquiring supplies, faculty and students in the class have written many proposals that have had an excellent success rate. Academic units involved have also been very generous, Blatchley says.

“We are very proud of our students and their hard work and innovation,” he says. “Alongside our coalition partners, they’ve learned leadership, development and how to work hand-in-hand with a local community.”

Work involved coordination with the nonprofit Aqua Clara International of Holland, Michigan, which works to provide affordable and safe water solutions for communities in developing countries.

Rotary International helped to identify communities to work with and connect the project team to community leaders in the Dominican Republic. Additional assistance was provided by Universidad Católica Tecnológica del Cibao (UCATECI), a private university located in La Vega, Dominican Republic.

The Lyles School of Civil Engineering, the Division of Environmental & Ecological Engineering, the departments of Agricultural Economics and Food Science in the College of Agriculture, the Department of Biological Sciences and the School of Nursing each collaborated in the initiative.

Future activities

Completion of construction and implementation of the system at the Ana Julia School in Las Canas represents an important milestone for the class project; however, it doesn’t represent an endpoint, Blatchley says.

Sand filter system at Las Canas. The filter was purchased as a commercially available swimming pool filter from a hardware store in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The reinforced concrete platform was designed to support the weight of two 1,000-liter water tanks and to conform to building and earthquake codes.

“We have worked with the community members to develop a governance structure for the system,” he says. “We have provided extensive educational programs and materials to address the operation and maintenance of the system as well as public health and hygiene practices.”

The Las Canas project was designed as a pilot effort, and its lessons will inform projects in more Dominican Republic communities that face similar water problems.

“In our trips to the Dominican Republic, and in communication with our project partners there, we have been able to identify other communities where similar systems are needed,” Blatchley says.

Candidate communities include the town of La Torre, which is immediately adjacent to Las Canas, and Escuela Reparadero, another school in the area. In addition, several facilities operated by Children International could be used as future locations for such a system.