News Release

Canadian Water Treatment Plant Aides Troops in Kabul:

FilterBoxx™ Packaged Water Treatment Solutions and a BC metalworking firm have combined forces on a rush job to make sure Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan have clean drinking water.

A Hercules transport plane flew out of Victoria airport with the six-tonne water treatment plant aboard, destination Kabul. FilterBoxx™ of Edmonton and Specific Mechanical Systems, a Victoria company better known for building microbreweries, had just 30 days to create the filtration system.

"It really came together," said FilterBoxx™ president Troy Lupul, at Specific's shop in the Keating Industrial Park.

The Canadian Forces gave the $350,000 water treatment plant job to FilterBoxx™, which in turn brought Specific Mechanical in to assemble the various filters, build a stainless steel holding tank and the heavy-duty aluminum skid that hold all the components.

The two companies have worked together before, mainly for energy industry clients who needed compact water or sewage treatment plants for remote exploration camps.

Specifications required the system to fit inside a Hercules air transport, said FilterBoxx™ engineer Kevin Slough of Calgary, who designed the treatment plant.

The finished system is 7.62 metres long, three metres wide and three metres high. The portable filtration plant pumps out 350 cubic metres of clean water a day for the military, 250 litres a minute, about 380,000 litres -- or several swimming pools worth, said Slough.

Filters including some "nanofiltration" systems will take out microbes and viruses, producing a water quality better than some municipal systems, even removing upwards of 60 per cent of dissolved salts.

Water is also being chlorinated as part of the treatment.

Traces of gasoline and diesel fuel have been found in some samples. There's been deliberate contamination of wells in the tribal fighting, said Lupul.

"We had to design this thing for the worst-case scenario," Lupul said. It's going into a "hot zone," he said, referring to both the 35-degree heat and the continuing fighting in Afghanistan.

Some of the water will be bottled to serve Canadian troops, and Dutch and German soldiers who are part of the Afghanistan security assistance forces whose job is to bolster the new Afghan government.

It's expected to supply 1,600 to 1,800 people with all their water, Slough said.

Lupul personally flew to Kabul to commission the system and ensure everything worked. Since then Troy has been back on site three times to commission more components required by the military.