U.S. Water News Online
OKLAHOMA CITY -- A group of Oklahoma businessmen whose self-financed project helped bring water to villagers in China plan similar efforts in Africa and the Philippines.
The nonprofit group is called Solar Streams of Water, because solar-powered water pumps are used in areas that lack good electrical service.
"We've pretty much committed to doing this as long as we have money," said Dick Greenly of Oklahoma City, owner of Pumps of Oklahoma and one of seven members of the group.
Their efforts to get funding from the United Nations and the World Bank bogged down in red tape, so the men decided to provide the money for the projects themselves.
Each project costs about $8,000 (euro5,904), not including travel expenses for those who install the systems -- a battery of solar panels and an electric pump. Greenly said time is a bigger concern than money.
"It's totally fun to do this. It's a blast, and we're doing something that truly these villagers will remember all their lives," he said.
David Sabatini, a University of Oklahoma civil engineering professor, said he got into the projects to save lives. He is founder of OU's WaTER Center. The acronym stands for Water Technologies for Emerging Regions.
"The number of deaths per year due to unsafe water is on the order of over 2 million people a year, and many of them are children," he said.
The two systems installed in China's Guangxi Province pump surface water that collects in caves up to a mile from the villages. They selected two villages -- Tanding, a village of 80 people; and Gufang, a village that is home to a central school serving 230 students from 17 villages.
The group is now gearing up to install pumps at orphanages in Zambia and the Philippines. Greenly also plans a mid-September trip to a remote village in Sudan to check out a possible site.
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