Cas Charles and Les Forges

Ca Charles is a small valley area that is contributory to the Les Forges valley which drains naturally toward the HAS campus.

Both valleys are characterized by high steep walls with highly erosive soils and rock outcrops that show nearly vertical and narrowly spaced faulting. The spring box systems were constructed near the top end of the valleys to cap springs or hillside.

For the past ten years the maintenance staff has had to invest increasing amounts of labor and material to maintain the water supply piping on an ongoing basis especially during spring rains due to large rock ansystem.

Large projects have been constructed using local labor to build stone cut off walls and gabions around the spring boxes in an attempt to limit the amount of silt cominto the spring box collection from up.

This area, as is generally true throughout the country, (Haiti is 98% deforested) suffers from severe erosion and loss of topsoil due to the extensive deforestation. Available woody materials are constantly harvested by the local population to be used in the production of charcoal for cooking fuel and for sale for income.

Due to extensive housing development and “freeses” or illegal tap connections to the main Cas Charles line up gradient of the reservoirs, the line from the reservoirs to HAS and Corridor no longer flowed, and the HAS reservoir has been abandoned due to dilapidation.

The country of Haiti suffers from ongoing dire lack of clean water for approximately 80% of its population.

Situation is severely compounded in the dry season. The strain on the population of the Cite and the Corridor and on HAS during the dry season is crippling to human life and hospital operations.

This situation was further complicated in the summer of 2005 when the entire spring box collection system and waterline from Cas Charflooding.