Peru, 2007-08

Blackburn & Associates has been working with the village of Huacaria, Peru since 2003 to help the 180 residents there obtain clean water through slow sand filtration. Company president Humphrey Blackburn first traveled to the village after meeting photographer Nancy Santullo, founder and executive director of House of the Children, in 2003. Nancy has been working in Peru since 1999, when she traveled there to pursue her interest in the medicinal healing properties indigenous to the region. Since then, House of the Children has helped Huacaria become the first indigenous community in the southeastern Peruvian Amazon to have secure clean drinking water, quality sanitary installations and culturally appropriate health education. HOTC is now performing a feasibility study towards future water/sanitation projects in the broader region.

In November 2007, Humphrey Blackburn returned to Peru as part of a team traveling up the remote Manu River to map and ascertain the possibilities of transfering and implimenting the technology so successful in Huacaria to two remote villages Tayacome and Yamibato

The following pictures are from Humphrey's visits to Huacaria, (January 2006, August 2007) and the villages of Tayacome and Yamibato in Manu National Park in November 2007. For more information about House of the Children, the Huacaria project, and other programs of HOTC visit their website at www.houseofthechildren.org.

 
Humphrey Blackburn and HOTC Director Nancy Santullo heading upriver to Yamibato.

Nancy Santullo (second from left) helping to wet harrow an SSF 1800 slow sand filter in the village.

Humphrey Blackburn (third from right) with the Huacaria water committee at the roughing (pre-treatment) filter for the community slow sand filter.

The community of Yamibato along with the team from HOTC.

Driving in to Pilcopata from Cusco

  The US and Peruvian team.

A Meeting in the community school house to explain how slow sand filtration works.

 Carlos taking a water sample in Yamibato for bacterial analysis.

Top left: A coliform test for unfiltered water showed very high contaminent levels; Top right: Raw water after processing through the roughing filter removed some of the coliform. Bottom left: The test after community slow sand filter demonstrated a 99.9 percent removal; Bottom right: After cholorination, no coliform were present (100 percent removal).

Three children of Huacaria, enjoying the filtered water at a community sink.