Bringing Safe Water to the World

Almost every day, Sarah and her best friend walk to a deep hole dug into a dry riverbed in Sudan to fetch water for their families. It's a seven-and-a-half-hour journey in brutal heat, the return trip made even more arduous by the weight of the 5-gallon water container, which Sarah carries on her head -- a load of about 45 pounds of water of questionable quality.

Sarah's journey was captured in real time in the documentary The Long Walk, by Alice Hobbs. But her story is by no means unique. One billion people around the world don't have access to clean, safe water. Developed countries have essentially eradicated diseases such as cholera, typhoid and malaria, but in developing nations, these and other waterborne illnesses kill 5 million people each year -- 6,000 children every day. And global warming is exacerbating this crisis as severe, prolonged droughts dry up water supplies in arid regions and heavy rains cause sewage overflows. In terms of the sheer number of people affected, the lack of access to safe water and basic sanitation is a massive problem. Yet it is a problem with proven solutions.

What Makes Water Unsafe?

Drinking water contaminated with chemicals or bacteria can make people sick, especially children and the elderly. Water can be contaminated with bacteria when it comes into contact with untreated human waste. Nearly half the people on the planet -- most of them in China and India -- don't have a system to safely dispose of human waste and keep it away from areas where people can come into contact with it. As a result, disease-causing bacteria can enter the water supply and spread through a population. Children are particularly vulnerable to these waterborne diseases. Their small bodies take in a disproportionately large quantity of water and its contaminants, and their immune systems are not equipped to fight off invaders such as E. coli, giardia and the typhoid bacteria. More than 2 million children are killed by such diarrheal diseases each year, and 90 percent of them are kids under five.

Chemicals from industrial waste, pesticides that wash off from farms, or naturally occurring arsenic can also contaminate drinking water. Millions of people drink arsenic-laced well water every day, mostly in Bangladesh, West Bengal (India), China, Taiwan, Nepal and pockets of South America. The footprint of a contaminated well is painfully easy to spot: an epidemic of skin lesions, vascular and cardiac problems, and widespread bladder, lung, and skin cancer in affected areas.

Safe Water: Keystone of Environment, Health, Economy and Security

People who fall ill from waterborne diseases can't work. Women and girls like Sarah who travel hours to fetch clean water for their families can't go to school or hold on to a job. Without proper sanitation, human waste pollutes waterways and wildlife habitat. Global warming and population pressures are drying up water supplies and instigating conflict over scarce resources. Expanding access to clean water and sanitation will have ripple effects throughout local economies and societies.

The U.N. estimates that if the proportion of people without access to safe water and basic sanitation were halved, countries around the world would save $7.3 billion per year in health care costs, and the annual global value of adult working days gained because of less illness would be almost $750 million. Relocating wells or boreholes closer to users, installing piped water supply in houses, and building latrines closer to home would yield annual time savings worth $64 billion.

Simple Solutions Can Make Water Safer

Simple sanitation improvements, like digging pit latrines and treating drinking water with chlorine, filters and other simple, existing technologies can save millions of lives. The challenge is to put the right strategies to use in the right places, as needs vary from country to country.

The long-term goal is to provide safe sources of treated drinking water and improved sanitation for all. In the meantime, simple, shorter-term strategies can save millions of lives. The list of successful safe drinking water projects is growing, using simple household approaches, such as:

• Household chlorination or other chemical treatment
• Solar disinfection -- leaving transparent bottles of water in the sun to kill microbes
• Hygiene education and promoting hand-washing
• Boiling water using excess heat from cooking
• Filtering water using sand, cloth, ceramics or other existing materials.

Chemical contamination such as arsenic pollution can be more difficult to solve, but strategies like these have been successful in particular regions:

• Accessing low-arsenic water through shallow groundwater or deeper aquifers
• Rainwater harvesting
• Pond-sand filtration
• Household chemical treatment
• Piping in water from safe or treated sources.

Safe Water by 2015: How to Get it Done

Safe water is a critical environmental and public health issue, as well as a means to lift people out of poverty and ensure human security. Yet the number of people without safe water is increasing. Water supply and sanitation programs can't be developed in isolation from other development issues. Global warming is affecting water supplies, creating shifts in agriculture and where people live. AIDS patients especially need access to clean water so they don't fall ill from common waterborne germs that healthy adults can fend off. Integrating safe water programs into larger development strategies often involves complex, many-sided reforms, which requires high-level coordination and firm political will to get the job done.

The United Nations included safe water in its Millennium Development goals, with the intention of reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

In 2005, the United States Congress codified the goal into law by passing the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act. The act made the provision of safe water and sanitation a cornerstone of U.S. foreign aid by integrating water sanitation into all U.S. development programs. However, Congress has failed to designate any funds for its implementation.

Providing safe water is an essential step for human health and development. Global awareness of this issue is rising, but our leaders need to take concrete action in order to solve this crisis in the next decade. NRDC is urging the U.S. Congress to fully fund the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act, and is helping provide concrete recommendations to implement the act successfully. By encouraging leadership and generating momentum for solutions, we can save millions of lives over the next 10 years.