Water in Haiti

Haiti’s trees have been cut down. We all know that. The poor farmers cut down the trees because they needed to turn them into charcoal in underground stoves. They need a fuel source and need to sell the charcoal for money.

Now since there are very few trees on the mountain sides, and when the rains come hard, the topsoil is carried away. Since the trees and topsoil are gone, the rainwater is not sufficiently absorbed into the underground water source called the aquifer.

The Port-au-Prince aquifer is ever shrinking and with a lack of pressure in the underground water source, salt water is leaking in. Thus, there is not near enough clean from the 18 springs that supply water for the three million people in the capital.

In fact, greater than 60% of eight million Haitians do not have access to clean water. Haiti ranked last on the International Water Poverty Index.

Haitian kids as young as four years old carry water in plastic containers. Children walk many miles in the countryside and the cities to bring water back home for the family.

Poverty has caused Haiti’s ecologic suicide which has contaminated Haiti’s water. And the bad water is killing Haiti's babies.