TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Whenever there is a natural disaster, we see the government and non-profit groups  mobilizing to send water bottles to those in need.

But what if the time and expense of that wasn’t needed and there was a way, if a person’s water was still flowing through their pipes, that they could put a filter on a faucet and drink, cook with and bathe with their own water?

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That technology exists thanks to two Traverse City companies, OLA Filter and Hacha Products Corporation.

OLA Filter makes the filters and Hacha distributes the filters for them. Hacha is an authorized distributor and is a company that delivers easy-to-use, affordable, and effective products designed to provide clean water that is safe for drinking, infrastructure, and agriculture.

The OLA filter hit the market in August as a filter to protect against waterborne diseases. The goal of the product, developed by engineer Theresa Smith of OLA, was to get it into the homes of developing countries. However, it also has the potential to be a lifesaver in the United States as well.

The filter is compact, about the size of a salt shaker and it’s sustainable. It’s reusable because it can be cleaned and maintained and they last anywhere from 2.5 to ten years depending on the kind of water that goes through it.

The filter blocks bacteria, parasites, cysts, micro-plastics and sediments, leaving you with pure drinking water. It protects people from Dysentery, E.Coli, Salmonella, Cholera, Botulism, Giardia and many other diseases.

Kimberly Meek, owner and CEO of Hacha, spoke on the radio recently on The Ron Jolly Show along with Theresa Smith and Eamon Smith (no relation) who is on the advisory board of Hacha.

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Theresa Smith, a mechanical engineer who worked in design and prototyping for Toyota for 20 years, met Meek at New Tech in Traverse City, a local version of “Shark Tank” with a pitch competition supported by tech enthusiasts, businesses, entrepreneurs and Michigan policy makers to find local talent in the Traverse City region. That meeting
resulted in Hacha becoming an authorized distributor of the filter.

Theresa Smith says that she has a partner in Guatemala and that’s where the products are made – where they are needed. She said that even though she’s got a small company right now, she hopes that this filter will reach a lot of people someday. She told Ron Jolly that she’s not in it to get rich – but she wants to get the filter to as many people as possible.

Meek said that their job at Hacha is to “get it into as many households in the country as possible and to go global.” She said that one million people die a year from unsafe drinking and cooking water and those people are usually young children. She went on to say that the filter is small and easy to put in a backpack or purse when traveling to
another country.

The filter goes at the end of a threaded standard faucet. These are the types of faucets that are on the side of homes and are the primary water supply in developing countries.

Whether across the planet or here in the United States, people who use these filters would be able to fill up buckets of clean drinking water instead of relying on donated plastic water bottles or having to boil their water.

Hacha Products Corp and OLA Filter, both based out of Traverse City, have been concerned about the destruction from Hurricane Ian and Florida. Both Meek and Eamon Smith have family members in southwest Florida and have heard first hand of the devastation. Hacha and OLA Filter have been working together with a fundraiser to send water filters to those in need in southwest Florida. Their goal is to send 500 filters down south. They shipped out 350 of them this morning and are taking donations through the end of the month to send more.

The link to the donation site is here.

Sponsoring a water filter is $21. You can also sponsor 10 filters for $210 or 50 filters for $1050. The money donated will be used to cover the cost of the filter and the logistics to get them to Florida.

Hacha Products has their office at 20Fathoms, a workspace that is a home for technology, innovation and entrepreneurship in Traverse City. Meek says they’ve been helpful in launching their fundraising campaign.

Hacha and OLA Filter are working with Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) on the logistics side of things to get the filters distributed where they are needed. GEM is a non-profit organization, founded in 2011, as a first responder to global disasters. Founder Michael Capponi says on their website, “Our main objectives are to deliver the most amount of aid to the most amount of people in need, in the shortest amount of time and with the least amount of costs to our donors.”