One by one river polluting latrines in Cap Haitien's shantytown Shada are being replaced with ecological toilets

Cap-Haitien April 23, 2008 - "Are you going to help us or just do studies like all the other blancs?" was the reproachful question that a Shada resident asked Peter Haas, AIDG's Executive Director, on his first visit to the shantytown in Cap-Haitien, Haiti. Haas was there to determine how best AIDG's initial projects on sanitation and energy production in Haiti could benefit Shada. 

It was a powerful rebuke meant to convey that the community was frustrated and wanted quicker action on sanitation issues from NGOs and charitable groups. With this stated question as a call to arms, AIDG and its community partner, SOIL, recently finished 2 dry-composting community latrines in Shada. Together these systems, also known as ecosan (ecological sanitation) or urine-diverting toilets, now serve approximately 400 residents.

Aside from these two latrines and a third built by SOIL in January, the only other available sanitation facilities in Shada are iron and wood lean-tos that hang over the stagnant river. Those who use them typically pay 1-2 Gourdes ($0.03-0.06) a time. Though ramshackle, they offer people, particularly women, a modicum of privacy when they want to relieve themselves. During the daylight hours children, on the other hand, defecate in the open air near the combined dumping area/pig trough, the river's edge. In their homes, families use plastic buckets that are later emptied into the same water source. The river slowly, very slowly, carries the waste out the sea except during the rainy season when it floods. There isn't a whisper of public services.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 people live along Shada's labyrinthine streets. Homes are made of cinder block and corrugated iron, some with or without doors. In one of these homes lives Madame Bwa, a dynamic community health worker, and AIDG and SOIL's liaison in the community. When they first met, Madame Bwa greeted the AIDG team with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. She was instrumental in helping organizing supply deliveries and finding laborers from the community to help with the build. She and other community members also organized a meeting with the owner of one of the overhang pay toilets to coordinate its dismantling after the ecosan latrines were built.

Ecosan toilets are a safe way to process human waste that keeps it and the harmful pathogens it contains out of the water supply. The latrine design used in Shada is equipped with two chambers where waste is converted into fertilizer. One side is used while waste in the other dries and decomposes. The dry conditions kill most pathogens and parasites. After about a year, the waste is turned into humanure that can be used on crops as fertilizer or otherwise safely disposed of.

Recently, the local government in Cap Haitien has expressed interest in building 10-20 additional ecosan latrines in Shada. 

In addition to AIDG's plans to construct a municipal biogas plant for waste treatment in Cap-Haitien, they are further partnering with SOIL to set up a municipal compost site that will process solid waste from full composting latrines as well as effluent from biogas plant. Several agro-businesses in and around Cap Haitien have already been identified that would be interested in purchasing fertilizer once production begins and safety of the compost has been demonstrated. The local government in Milot has offered 60 acres of government land to be dedicated for these projects pending national approval.