On Saturday, March 21, I joined 800 others in the Walk for Water organized by Water Missions International, a Christian non-profit organization that engineers, builds and installs waters systems that have provided safe water for over one million people around the world. It's easy to believe that water is unlimited and safe despite living in a country that in 2000 used 71,000 billion gallons of water annually to cool electric generating plants! (200 billion gallons in South Carolina alone.)Theloss through evaporationamounted toonly 3 percentor 1.7 trillion gallons! This is ground water not filling aquifiers and rivers when 46 states in the next 10 years are projected to experience droughts and shortages of water. The country's list of top ten polluted rivers include the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Tennesse, the Delaware, the Thames, the Savannahall near major urban centers and flowing through or bordering 18 states. My river maybe dirty and filled with germs, but my tap is clean. It flows when I turn the handle.
Children water carriers walking to the light
along Charleston harbor
Those who enjoy its benefits can easily deny the problems of health and hygience connected to water, its shortages or its lack of sanitation. But outside of America, or in disaster areas, the evidence is visible full force. The alarms sound with a jarring reality. A tool for life, water is a part of too many unecessary deaths, yet there are no pictures of the funerals and caskets of those children and adults who die from contact or drinking unclean water, 25, 000 a day.
The Walk for Water is also a way for the local community to say thank you to WMI. The walking throng believe in what WMI is doing. Their walk affirms unspoken common values.
Founded by an engineer and his wife who turned a Charleston business start-up into one of the top 10 environmental testing labs in the US, Water Missions International was born when the firm designed and built six water treatment units for Honduras in 1998, after Hurricane Mitch. The first prototype was completed in two days!
The initial design continually evolved. Movable parts were replaced, manufacturing costs lowered, reliability improved. Spare parts are usually not handy is places where water is scarce.
That first experience, conceived after talking to an Episcopal bishop in Honduras, led George and Molly Greene give up their careers and commit their lives to designing and installing portable water systems, engineered for durability in a variety of conditions and terrain, easily operated and maintained by community members, now installed in 40 countries.
The WMI system is called the Living Water Treatment System (LWTS), and each system also comes with a ministry plan for sharing the Living Water message. WMI is a Christian non-profit. With each installation, the organization shares with each community its faith in Christ. They tell the good news of how God guides their vision and acts. To those interested, they share the fundamentals of Christian belief. But no one is denied water or acess as a condition of beliefwater is available to all.
The WMI 2008 operating plan called for WMI to excel in the gracious act of giving. To that end,Bolivia, Nicaragua, Peru, North Korea, Uganda, Mexico, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Dominican Republic were among three countries in which systems were installed in 2008. WMI currently has 568 systems in 40 countries and two US States. Less than ten percent of their seven million dollar 2008 budget was allocated for administrative and operating costs.
In December, 18 high school students sailed to the Dominican Republic on South Carolina's hand-built 140 foot-long tall ship, The Spirit of South Carolina, to install a system in a Dominican village.
The LWTS can filter and purify water by taking out particlesandbacteria, at a cost of15 centsper 1000 gallons!
Three cylindrical filtration tanks (tan)
The current LWTS design runs by solar panels. The panels increase manufacturing costs but substantiallylowercosts andimprovereliability for the end userscommunities who have never before have a source of clean water, or communities that need water as a part of disaster relief.
Solar panels run the pump for backwashing
and cycling water through the LWST
Before the walk, George Greene explained the system and answered questions as he waited on the city fire trunks to bring in rust colored water for the on-site demonstration.
I learn the heart of the system is its filter and pumps. The most critical parts of the system is the filtration. We have three filtering tanks and the pump powers the back wash. The tanks use anthracite particles and three sizes of garnet particles (harder than sand and preferred in multiple layer filtration systems). The smallest garnet particles actually filter bacteria out of the water. Quality control of the particle is essential.
Garnet has the advantage of working to cleanse certain types of micro-organisms, but the system could also use sand.
A current LWTS engineered WMI
and assembled by WMI volunteers
On the walk, as we turn along the river, Alice Wannamaker, a tall, bright-eyed high school student walking with her father; volunteers to be interviewed. As we walk along,shedescribes her travels to Honduras for 14 days with a group of students on a mission to install a LWTS in a village that had no municipal water service. The village only had latrines. The mission was sponsored by a Christian non-profit organization that works regularly in Honduras. Alice helped with Sunday school and worked in the village. She learned to take Navy showers (conserving water by turning it off). She doesn't speak Spanish, and although many of the students were in college and spoke Spanish and she initially felt a little out of her element, she wants to go back.
I met the youth minister at St. Philip's Church, the oldest congregation in the city, founded in 1671. The Greenes, the founders of WMI, are members of St. Philips.
WMI is a Christian non-profit. A part of their plan is to witness and support the good news of Christ and the plan of salvation offered by his death and resurrection. Many individuals and teams in the Walk for Water are believers, but the walk doesn't have an edgy push for faith or witness. The overt Christians are having fun.
The Acts, for example, are a group of high school students and with a younger ringer who is skilled in public relations. The PR guide chimes in and explains who's who, minimizes her role, but is cheerful and graceful, offering the spotlight to others. Laughing, enjoying the occasion to the point of a silliness that fits in perfectly, the Acts explain they attend Hanahan High School one county over from Charleston. Organized 15 years ago, the Acts meet at school and participate in community activities. WMI send a speaker to their weekly meeting at school, and after a group decision, here they are, early Saturday morning.
Their solemn procession enlivens the whole crowd. These young folk all have crazy hats and opaque lime-yellow half gallon water bottles partially filled with beans, and one carries a tall green banner. They sing and chant. The water bottles are shakers. They are raucous, their water bottles cast rhythms in the air. They make a joyful noise: their enthusiasm is infectious. They are having fun for a good cause. I recall a verse from Psalms 4,You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound, and quote from Hannah's Prayer in 1 Samuel (4), I delight in your deliverance.
Later, during the awards, The Acts win the Spirit award. One of the members spies me in the crowd and tells me with pride.
Pyramids of water buckets
I find members from St. Mark's Methodist Church in the crowd on the return trip. St Mark's is located in the nearby suburb, James Island. St. Mark's has been rising money for WMI by placing cups at the end of the church's pews. Many of St. Mark's members are older, but contributed weekly to the cause. The families I meet are representing the congregation, but they are personally committed to the community spirit of the walk. They support the WMI goals and mission. This is their first walk, and they are enjoying being in that number, the great gathering of walkers stretching for blocks and filling the streets. Among the St. Mark members is a church musician walking with her children and her friend, a wife and mother whose husband plays with a local band, Station 15. (stations mark sections of the beach.)
Youth Cheer leaders greeting returning walkers
Beyond the horizon and the harbor, water is stirring new controversies. Private companies are buying water rights around the world, and South Carolina is embroiled in legal action against North Carolina for the water use from the Catawba River which borders each state. The Mingo aquifer under the city is being tested as a storage area. Redbreast, a species of drum fish, are disappearing from the nearby Edisto River, attacked by a non-native catfish that has expanded its habitant.
But today on the walk, water is a source of hope. Our steps today help Water Missions move forward on its journey of faith. The Walk for Water is focused on the basics of help, action, and insight. Its broad principle is that we are not to neglect the means for living, including water, one of the most vital of means. We also must not fear the absence of means, but step out boldly by faith and trust God to provide the means to water the whole surface, to aid in the work to preserve life.
The walk ends with family fun. A jump castle, bananas and apples, and information tables ring the park. When we return, having fulfilled our purpose, mindful of the whole surface, we pour out our buckets next to a tree.
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted by Walter Rhett from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories to share with local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show.(A Perlo is rice enriched by local bounty, carefully crafted to enhance its pleasure and value;enjoyed by all.)You may create a permalink to Southern Perlo by clicking the permalink button. And please,stir the Perlo--below, addyour comments! Water Missions International can be supported by a donation or memorial on the secure and safe Southern Perlo fund-raising page athttp://www.firstgiving/southernperlo.A link on the page leads to the Water Missions International site for further information. Water Missions is the only non-profit mission Southern Perlo supports. Thanks for giving!
