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UMCOR Provides Living WaterPosted: May 1999 
The Living Water System has a water tank on top and a water pump in front.
Water is basic for life, and nowhere is this fundamental truth more apparent than in developing countries. Polluted water causes dysentery, blindness, and other afflictions. Clean water makes possible health and continued life.
To meet this need for pure water, UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) has purchased units of a portable water filtering system developed in 1998 in Charleston, South Carolina, to respond to the devastation of Hurricane Mitch. Called Project Living Water, the system is being used by government and nongovernmental agencies around the world to design, place, and operate an innovative way of providing clean water.
Simply designed, the water units can be operated and maintained by individuals with minimal education. Basic tools to put them together are supplied with each unit. They are easy to transport and have storage capacity for 275 gallons of water.
Upon arrival a unit can be set up within hours. Operating costs are less than a dollar per 1,000 gallons, which is about $10.00 per day to provide up to 10,000 children, women, and men with safe drinking water.
Previous methods had many drawbacks: the cost of hauling bottled water; the inefficiency of small individual water treatment units to support thousands of people in a given area; and the complexity for villagers in operating and maintaining commercial mobile units.
The solution was to design a simple and durable system that could be used under the most difficult of circumstances for a village or small rural area. These qualities led UMCOR to purchase sixty of these life-saving units, which have been shipped to Central America, where millions now have reliable access to safe drinking water.
In places where there is no electricity or gasoline for energy, the units can be designed for use of human-powered mechanical means. Operation of the systems involve three basic steps: sediment removal by a back-washable sand filter; secondary filtration; and chlorination for removal and killing of bacteria and parasites that cause water-borne diseases such as typhoid, cholera, and dysentery.
Early results from usage has resulted in a 90% reduction in the number of patients with parasite and diarrhea, as reported by doctors on a mission trip to Honduras where these systems are now in operation.
