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AP 
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Group Fights to Deliver Water to the Poor

Sat Jan 29,10:23 PM ET

/By MARGARET STAFFORD, Associated Press Writer/

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Gary White remembers landing in a grassy field in 
Ecuador, canoeing two hours to a remote village and finding a 
gas-powered pump that was supposed to help the impoverished residents 
get water.

        

The pump worked only occasionally and, even then, residents usually 
couldn't afford the gas to run it.

"A gas-powered pump in the middle of the Amazon?" White says, shaking 
his head in dismay.

It is a perfect example, he says, of why nearly half of the 
well-intentioned efforts to bring reliable, sanitary water supplies to 
the world's poor fail.

The dismal failure rate — and the death and disease that a lack of safe 
water brings to people — convinced White to devote his life and his 
engineering talents to finding better solutions.

After working on projects in Honduras, White and a friend, Marla 
Smith-Nilson, in 1993 incorporated a nonprofit group called 
WaterPartners, with the lofty goal of "reaching a day when everyone in 
the world can take a safe drink of water."

Today, despite formidable hurdles, WaterPartners can boast of bringing 
82 water supply projects to 75,000 people in Asia, Africa and Latin 
America.

In one example, residents of six communities in Honduras constructed a 
low-tech water system, which involved building miles of pipeline over 
mountains to a spring, then adding distribution tanks to clean the water 
in each town. Gravity propels the water from a capped spring to the 
communities, where every house now has a tap and a toilet.

That effort had the essential elements that make such projects work, 
said White, executive director of WaterPartners. It begins with finding 
established community groups that will lead the projects, from planning 
and building to training residents to use and maintain them. Projects 
are as low-tech and inexpensive as possible, and communities are 
expected to help pay a portion of the maintenance costs, White said.

"Community mobilization is the key," he said. "I have archives full of 
broken down projects showing when the so-called First World countries 
dropped into a village, built a project, and disappeared."

There is a dire need to supply safe water to much of the world. The 
World Health Organization (news 
<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/ap/ap_on_sc/apn_providing_water/14139549/*http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news?fr=news-storylinks&p=%22World%20Health%20Organization%22&c=&n=20&yn=c&c=news&cs=nw> 
- web sites 
<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/ap/ap_on_sc/apn_providing_water/14139549/*http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=web-storylinks&p=World%20Health%20Organization>) 
says more than 1 billion people do not have access to safe or adequate 
water supplies, and water-related diseases are the main cause of death 
for children under 5. White says up to 80 percent of the disease in the 
world can be traced to unhealthy water.

WaterPartners, based in Kansas City, selects only 5 percent of the 
organizations it evaluates. Then it provides engineering, as well as 
health and hygiene training.

Health and hygiene education is imperative because it builds support for 
the projects, said Smith-Nilson, director of international programs for 
WaterPartners.

"It's not helpful if they are carrying the clean water home in a dirty 
bucket," said Smith-Nilson, who is based in Seattle. "It works if they 
understand that their children are going to be healthier with clean 
water, that they won't die or have a serious disease."

Other problems arise from scarce water. White said people — usually 
women and girls — spend millions of hours a year walking to remote sites 
for water; conflicts arise over scarce water; and the poor in urban 
areas pay vendors up to 12 times more for a gallon of water than those 
connected to a water system.

With every other water project doomed to fail, funding is a constant 
problem. White said many charitable and government organizations are 
reluctant to commit to efforts with such a high failure rate.

Most projects are funded with grants. But WaterPartners has implemented 
a new approach called WaterCredit. With the help of two $1 million 
grants it received last year, WaterCredit will provide loans — usually 
in combination with grants_ to fund projects.

While some communities are too poor to pay for the projects, many are 
willing and able to pay at least part of the cost, which gives them a 
direct stake in the projects, White said.

"Grants are money that's given away," he said. "There will never be 
enough money given away to solve this problem. Nobody has been willing 
to provide these people with credit. We believe the loans will stretch 
out their costs, and provide more money for more projects."

Cultural, social and governmental issues also can affect a water 
project's success.

Bill Larson, an associate professor of civil engineering at the 
Rochester Institute of Technology, has worked on water disinfection 
projects in Haiti, an effort similar to, but not connected with, 
WaterPartners.

Larson said most successful projects avoid government involvement.

"You deal with these small local groups who are in control of their own 
destiny more than other people," he said. "(Governments) are great at 
building something new, but not maintaining it."

John Briscoe, head of the Water and Sanitation Division for the World 
Health Organization, agreed that weak government institutions make 
delivering safe water more difficult. But he said some progress has been 
made.

"Every day for the past decade more than 200,000 people have acquired 
access to improved water services," Briscoe said in an e-mail interview 
from India.

White's claim that all of his projects are operating successfully was 
impossible to verify.

But others say White is known in water advocacy circles for his approach 
to solving the crisis.

"Gary has been in water projects for so many years, he has seen what 
works and what doesn't," said David Douglas, president of the Santa 
Fe-based nonprofit called WaterLines, which has a mission similar to 
WaterProjects.

"He is not parachuting in and imposing a solution, but he works by 
listening to see what works over time. He also has a very high level of 
accountability with his funders. I think he carries a tremendous amount 
of respect."

Still, many advocates' greatest frustration is a lack of understanding 
and apathy about the problem from wealthier countries.

"In America, even a homeless person can go to a water fountain and get a 
drink," White said. "The issue does not resonate with us. But how can we 
continue to let 5 million people die each year over such a simple thing 
as water?"