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."
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?"
[Homestead] Potable water systems that work--- contrast to those that don't,
tvoivozhd, 01/30/2005