A geoscientist at the University of Rhode Island has been awarded $190,000 by the World Bank to develop a system for providing safe, reliable and affordable drinking water to people in rural India.
The grant is one of 22 awarded in 13 countries to winners selected from a record pool of 2,900 applicants. They will share $4 million in funding from the World Bank’s Global Development Marketplace and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
URI associate professor Thomas Boving’s project – aimed at establishing a low-cost, easy-to-replicate model for treating polluted surface water – will train entrepreneurs to develop riverbank filtration wells.
A pilot site in Karnataka, India, will demonstrate how to build a business around the design, installation and operation of such filtration systems, according to a URI news release. Boving and a local collaborator will teach the region’s residents to operate such wells and monitor them for bacteria and other pathogens.
“The Kali River in southern India is very polluted, so if the locals rely on water from the river to drink, they get sick,” said Boving. “If they rely on existing wells for their water, they typically must carry the water long distances and the wells often go dry.”
But, he added, “Riverbank filtration wells … make use of the natural filtration capacity of the sediments underlaying the river and produce water without contaminants.” The wells are more reliable and user-friendly than other options, he said, because they are simple and require no chemicals.
His two-year project aims to provide access to safe drinking water for more than 5,000 villagers – and also to create local jobs and self-sustaining businesses. It builds on a similar project he and his partners are now pursuing in Jordan on a NATO grant.
