Clean, cheap, water filtration for developing communities

In the last two weeks I've been hearing a lot about several different versions of the same project - ceramic water filters. At the Abriendo Brecha VII Activist Scholar Conference at UT-Austin I saw a presentation by Oscar Muñoz, Deputy Director for the Center for Housing and Urban Development, Coloñias Program. The gist of the project is utilizing low-tech ceramic filters to provide potable water for those without access to it. Amazingly, this includes about 500,000 people in South Texas and untold millions across the globe. The way it works is, they mix fine grains of sawdust with clay, shape these cones to fit over a 5 gallon bucket and then fire the filters in a kiln. The heat burns up the sawdust leaving tiny pores for the water to seep through. Dipping the filters in collodial silver also improves the bacteria killing efficiency by another 2%.

Oscar said the cost floats depending on where you build the filters. In Texas it's about $25, but they also did a project in South America where it was much cheaper. He said their inspiration came from Potters for Peace who have a pretty good page on further details. A few days after this presentation I heard a piece on NPR about a similar program in Yemen. They mentioned a group Potters Without Borders doing very much the same thing as the A&M group.

One interesting side note to this is that local people are starting to learn the techniques and are making and selling these ceramic filters to their fellow townspeople. I haven't looked into the social entrepreneurship aspects of it but it would seem that a micro-loan would definitely fit into a more comprehensive program incorporating sustainability, clean water and economic success.

Water you looking at?

Now that the EPA has finally sprung into gear acknowledging climate change as a looming threat, it's go-time on figuring out how exactly we're going to price these so-called "carbon trades." It's an interesting problem that some pretty excellent minds are tackling. Last Friday, I attended the Environmental Defense Fund's 9th (and final) State Water Conference where the final panel consisted of a lengthy discussion of the Water/Energy Nexus.

Apparently, it is cutting edge thinking to associate water usage with energy production and to measure the amount of energy it takes to pump, treat and manage water (and wastewater for that matter). Amy Hardberger, by far the most entertaining presenter of the day, walked the audience through the basics of energy and water's mutual dependence. It's a rare feat to get several dozen people alert and chuckling after 5 hours of previous presentations, but Amy was somehow able to do it. Her paper (written with several others) is available online and easily accessible reading. I'm currently putting an unprecedented level of effort into learning about resource management, but was grateful to have such handy schematics and simplistic explanations at my disposal.

To paraphrase the discussion, reductions in energy can result in reductions of water usage, because water is most often the agent used for dissipating waste heat generated by power plants. Similarly, water conservation can save on energy costs by reducing the amount of work needed to process and pump water. A more complicated problem resides in the valuation of these respective environmental effects, but at least we've got some talented, entertaining people working on it.