4 Profiles

Introduction

Progress in dealing with the world’s water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) problems is, to a large extent, the result of endless labors on the part of individuals and organizations that devote vast amounts of time, energy, and financial resources to these efforts. A complete list of such individuals and organizations is well beyond the scope of this book. But it is possible to mention a sample of those individuals and organizations who have contributed to solving at least some share of the WASH problems that humans face today.

Perry Alagappan

Alagappan was named the winner of the 2015 Stockholm Junior Water Prize for his invention of an inexpensive and effective device for removing heavy metal contaminants from industrial waste water, making it safer for use as drinking water and for other domestic purposes. The award consisted of a trip to Sweden to receive the award, a $10,000 cash award, a crystal trophy, and a $5,000 cash award for his high school to promote water research and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research projects at the school.

Alagappan explained that his research arose out of a trip to India three years earlier with his parents. There he saw firsthand the results of people having to access water from rivers and streams that were already heavily contaminated with waste products from electronics production and other forms of manufacturing. Given the rapid rate of industrialization in the country, it seemed only reasonable to expect that this problem would continue to be more serious and that more and more lives would be at risk from the contaminated water.

Alagappan’s device consisted essentially of a filter made of quartz wool on which were deposited carbon nanotubes. Up to 99 percent of contaminants in industrial waste water passing through these filters was removed by the filter. The device can be manufactured commercially at an approximate cost of $20 per unit, or about one-fifth the cost of the best available existing water purification device for use with heavy metals.

Alagappan had invented the device while he was still a student at Clear Lake High School, in Houston, Texas, where he later graduated as salutatorian of his class. During his senior year, Alagappan was also a guest researcher in the laboratories of Andrew Barron in the Department of Chemistry at Rice University, in Houston. A full description of Alagappan’s project is available online at Water Environment Federation, http://w.weftec.org/PublicInformation/page.aspx?id=284, see “Full Paper.”

Alagappan’s parents are both engineers, and he has credited them with encouraging and promoting his own interest in science and research. After graduation, he planned to matriculate at Stanford University to continue his studies in science and engineering.

American Water Works Association

URL: http://www.awwa.org/

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) claims to be “the largest nonprofit, scientific and educational association dedicated to managing and treating water.” Founded in 1881, the organization currently has more than 50,000 members from the United States and around the world. The organization dates its history to March 29, 1881, when a group of 22 men representing the water industry from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee met at Engineer’s Hall on the campus of Washington University, in St. Louis, to form an association “for the exchange of information pertaining to the management of water-works, for the mutual advancement of consumers and water companies, and for the purpose of securing economy and uniformity in the operations of water-works.” Those principles guiding the association for nearly a hundred years until a new constitution adopted in 1976 included a somewhat refined form of those general objectives. Today the association focuses on four major goals:

Advancing the knowledge of the design, construction, operation, water treatment and management of water utilities and developing standards for procedures, equipment and materials used by public water supply systems;

Advancing the knowledge of the problems involved in the development of resources, production and distribution of safe and adequate water supplies;

Educating the public on the problems of water supply and promoting a spirit of cooperation between consumers and suppliers in solving these problems; and

Conducting research to determine the causes of problems of providing a safe and adequate water supply and proposing solutions thereto in an effort to improve the quality and quantity of the water supply provided to the public.

At the time of its formation, there were fewer than a thousand public water supply systems operating in the United States. Today, there are more than 50,000 such systems. As the size and scope of water treatment systems has developed over more than 130 years of AWWA’s existence, so has the complexity of the organization created to deal with water issues. Today, the association consists of five major levels of organization: leadership and staff, sections, councils, divisions, and committees. The leadership of the association consists of a board of directors that meets twice a year and sets general policy for the organization; executive committee that carries out board policies in the interim between board meetings; and a general staff who are responsible for the day-to-day operations of the association. The 43 AWWA sections are geographical regions that allow much of the association’s business to be carried out in such a way as to meet with individual member’s specific interests and concerns. The sections often correspond to state boundaries (e.g., the Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio sections), while others encompass more than one state (e.g., the Western Canada, Pacific Northwest, and Mexico sections). Each section operates under its own bylaws, elects its own officers, and meets at least once a year in conferences that range in size from a few hundred to more than 2,000 participants.

The six AWWA councils have been created by the board of directors and are designed to deal with broad, general issues with which the association is concerned, as suggested by their names, the International, Manufacturers/Associates, Public Affairs, Standards, Technical and Educational, and Water Utility councils. The eight divisions have been created to deal with specific areas of water management with which members might be particularly interested. Those divisions focus on distribution and plant operations, engineering and construction, management and leadership, small systems, water conservation, water quality and technology, water resources, and water science and research.

To some extent, much of the association’s day-to-day operations takes place through more than 250 committees that deal with very specific topics in which individual members are interested. The subject of such committees ranges from organisms in water and finance, accounting, and management to source water protection and horizontal and vertical line shaft pumps to coagulation and filtration and disinfection systems. Each committee is led by a chairperson elected by committee members and is supported by a staff person from the AWWA central office. Most committees meet at least once a year at the annual meeting, but tend to conduct their business by e-mail rather than through regular face-to-face meetings.

The association sponsors a number of major conferences each year, the largest and most important of which is the annual conference attended by about 11,500 participants in 2015, 640 of whom came from 42 foreign countries. In addition to the annual conference, AWWA sponsors major meetings on specialized topics, such as (for 2016) biological treatment, membrane technology, financial management, potable refuse, sustainable water management, water infrastructure, utility managements, water loss, and water quality technology. AWWA also operates an extensive number of educational programs including ACE Online, a collection of podcasts of previous conference sessions for those who had been unable to attend the meetings themselves, webinars on a variety of specific water-related topics, and self-paced distance learning courses on topics such as introduction to the utility, basic supervision, hiring employees and rules, management responsibilities, and management styles.

The AWWA Web site is an invaluable source of basic information on a large number of topics associated with the collection, storage, and management of water resources. Some of the topics for which information is available are asset management, backflow prevention and cross connection control, climate change, cyanotoxins, desalination, drought, groundwater, how water works, small systems, source water protection, wastewater, wastewater collection systems, water conservation, and water loss control. These Web pages are available to the general public, upon registration at the AWWA Web site (http://www.awwa.org/resources-tools/water-knowledge.aspx).

AWWA has two regular publications, a scholarly journal of research and news, Journal AWWA, and a monthly magazine dealing with news of interest to the industry, Opflow. In addition, the association publishes a number of industry standard publications, manuals of practice, reports, books, digital downloads, and other publications of interest to professionals in the field and/or the general public.

John Briscoe (1948–2014)

Briscoe was an environmental engineer who was born in South Africa but spent most of his life working in a variety of water-related programs in Bangladesh, Mozambique, Brazil, the United States, and other countries. He was awarded the 2014 Stockholm Water Prize for his ability to combine “world-class research with policy implementation and practice to improve the development and management of water resources as well as access to safe drinking water and sanitation.” Briscoe died at his home in Poolesville, Maryland, on November 12, 2014, only a few months after receiving the Stockholm award.

Briscoe was born on July 30, 1948, in Brakpan, South Africa. His father worked at a stock exchange, and his mother managed an orphanage and day care center. Brakpan is a gold and uranium mining town at the edge of a very arid region in South Africa. Growing up in this setting, Briscoe was later to say, gave him an especially firsthand understanding as to what it meant to live in an area where water scarcity was an everyday fact of life. After completing his secondary education, Briscoe enrolled at the University of Cape Town, from which he received his BS degree in civil engineering in 1969. He then continued his studies at Harvard University, which granted his MS and his PhD degrees in environmental engineering in 1972 and 1976, respectively.

In his curriculum vitae, Briscoe notes that he spent his life working at a variety of organizations concerned with issues of water and economic development, including a number of major universities, such as Harvard University and the University of North Carolina; a major international public health research institution (the Cholera Research Laboratory, now the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research); a nongovernmental organization (OXFAM); government water management agencies (South Africa and Mozambique); and the World Bank. His detailed list of jobs illustrates this diverse range of activities, which included three months working for the South African electricity company, ESCOM, on the construction of thermal power stations; three months with the John Mowlen Company, in the building of the King George Dock in Hull, England; one year as a planning engineer at the Department of Water Affairs in South Africa; one year as a research scientist at the Harvard University School of Public Health; two years as an epidemiologist at the Cholera Research Laboratory in Bangladesh; two years as a water engineer at the National Directorate of Water in Mozambique; two years as senior economist for the Brazil Department of the World Bank; five years as chief of the Water and Sanitation Division of the World Bank; and eight years as senior water advisor at the World Bank. At the time of his death, Briscoe was Gordon MacKay Professor for the Practice of Environmental Engineering and director of the Harvard Water Initiative.

Briscoe was author, coauthor, or editor of eight books, including Water for Rural Communities: Helping People Help Themselves (with David de Ferranti, 1988); India’s Water Economy: Bracing for a Turbulent Future (with R.P.S. Malik, 2006); Handbook on Water Resources Development and Management in India (with R.P.S. Malik, eds., 2007); and Pakistan’s Water Economy: Running Dry (with Usman Qamar, 2007). He was also the author or coauthor of 120 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.

In addition to the Stockholm award, Briscoe received a number of other honors, including the University of Cape Town Medals in Hydraulics, Hydrology, Transportation, Highways, Soil Mechanics and Thesis; City of Cape Town Gold Medal as Best Graduating Engineering Student at the University; South African Steel Institute Award for Best Structural Design; Harvard University Clemons Herschel Prize, Grande Medalha de Inconfidencia from the government of Brazil, President’s Award of the International Water Association, and Stroud Prize for Excellence in Water.

Jimmy Carter (1924–)

An important feature of many WASH programs involves the reduction or elimination of so-called neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The term refers to a group of communicable diseases that occur primarily in tropical and subtropical countries among an estimated 1 billion people. They include conditions such as Chagas disease, dengue fever, guinea-worm disease (dracunculiasis), yaws (endemic treponematoses), leishmaniasis, leprosy (Hansen disease), river blindness (onchocerciasis), and schistosomiasis. In the late 1980s, the Carter Center, in Atlanta, Georgia, took on the task of eliminating one of these diseases, guinea-worm disease. At the time, the disease affected an estimated 3.5 million people worldwide, and little research had been done on the prevention or treatment of the condition. Thirty years later, in 2015, experts estimated that only 126 cases of guinea-worm disease remained in the world. It was on its way to being only the second communicable disease (after smallpox) to be completely eradicated from the Earth. Credit for accomplishment of this impressive feat goes primarily to the Carter Center and its founder, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. Carter decided in the late 1980s to make guinea-worm disease a target of his organization’s efforts after visiting Africa and seeing firsthand the devastation caused by the disease. For his efforts in this area, Carter was named one of the “Heroes of Water” by Impeller magazine in 2012.

James Earl Carter Jr. (generally known as “Jimmy”) was born in Plains, Georgia, on October 1, 1924. His mother was Bessie Lillian Gordy Carter, a registered nurse, and his father was James Earl Carter Sr., a farmer and a businessman who ran a general store. In 1928, the Carters moved from Plains to the nearby town of Archery, a community consisting largely of African Americans. Although James Carter Sr. still believed in segregation of the races, he allowed his son to befriend his neighbors regardless of their skin color. Young Jimmy became an entrepreneur at a young age when he began growing peanuts on an acre of land that his father had given him. He conducted his business while attending Plains High School, from which he graduated in 1941.

After graduation, Carter matriculated at Georgia Southwestern College in nearby Americus. He regarded his time at Southwestern primarily as preparation for his real ambition, obtaining an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Thus, he focused on the courses at Southwestern that would allow him to qualify for the Naval Academy and not necessarily for graduation from Southwestern. Finally, in 1943, Carter obtained his appointment to the Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1946. After receiving his commission, Carter was assigned to the battleship USS Wyoming, in Norfolk, Virginia. A month after receiving his assignment, he was married to Rosalynn Smith, with whom he was eventually to have four children, John, James III (Chip), Donnell, and Amy.

In 1948, Carter was accepted at the submarine officer training school at New London, Connecticut, setting the path he had decided to follow in the navy. After assignments in Honolulu and San Diego, Carter returned to New London in 1952, where he had been accepted as a member of Admiral Hyman Rickover’s new nuclear submarine program. At the completion of the program, Carter was assigned to the USS Seawolf, one of the first U.S. nuclear submarines.

At this point in his life, Carter seemed set on a career in the U.S. Navy, with the possibility of significant advances up the career ladder. His future was interrupted, however, with the death of his father on July 23, 1953. After agonizing over his choices, Carter finally decided to resign his commission in the navy in order to return to Georgia and take up the running of his father’s business. He left the navy with an honorable discharge on October 9, 1953, and returned to Plains.

For the next decade, Carter struggled with the peanut business in Plains, dealing with a variety of economic and environmental issues that nearly brought the business to bankruptcy. As he struggled with the business, Carter also became involved with dramatic political changes occurring around him as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1962 Baker v. Carr case, in which the court affirmed the now famous “one-man, one-vote” policy for all elections in the United States. The decision led to the opening of elections in Georgia that had previously been controlled by a handful of influential individuals. Carter decided to run for the state senate at the last moment and, when votes had been counted, appeared to have lost the race. A recount found that questionable voting had occurred and that instead of losing by 139 votes, he had actually won by 831 votes. Carter took his seat in the Georgia senate on January 14, 1963.

Carter was reelected to the state senate in 1964, but began to think of higher offices even before his second term ended. In 1966, he announced that he had decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives, although he soon changed his mind and decided to run for governor of Georgia instead. Carter lost that election and returned to the peanut farm in Plains. But he had announced to his supporters that he would be back and, in fact, he ran for governor again in 1970, this time successfully. A month before completing his first term as governor (Georgia governors are allowed to serve only one term), Carter announced that he was running for president of the United States in the 1976 election. At the time, he was virtually unknown nationally and was thought to have no chance of success. He pursued an aggressive campaign, however, and was elected 39th president of the United States on November 2, 1976.

Carter served only one term as president, being defeated in a landslide by Ronald Reagan in 1980. He then returned to Plains, but began a second career that has involved a wide array of political and humanitarian activities, including visits to almost every part of the world to encourage fair elections and humane treatment of all groups of individuals. In 2002, Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his efforts “to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

CH2M

CH2M received the 2015 Stockholm Industry Water Award “for developing and advancing methods to clean water, and increasing public acceptance of recycled water.” The company was formed in 1946 by three graduates of Oregon State College (now Oregon State University), in Corvallis, Holly Cornell, Jim Howland, and Burke Hayes, and one of their civil engineering professors, Fred Merryfield. The name they originally chose for their business, Cornell, Howland, Hayes, and Merryfield, was later changed to the current shortened version consisting of the initials of their last names.

Initially formed to “tackle important problems with technology, creativity, and ingenuity,” the firm took on a broad range of construction, consulting, design, and management problems. But it became particularly involved with water problems early in its history. For example, they were hired in 1965 to take on the task of helping to redesign the South Lake Tahoe (California) Public Utility’s wastewater treatment plant. The existing plant was unable to keep up with rapid developments taking place around the lake, and its water treatment system was unable to continue providing potable water to its customers. CH2M developed new technology to solve this problem, technology that it claims “became a model for many tertiary advanced wastewater treatment facilities” that were later built in many parts of the world. (Tertiary wastewater treatment is the final phase of purification that makes water safe for domestic uses.)

Today, CH2M has expanded far beyond its modest beginnings with the capacity to take projects of virtually any size and any complexity anywhere in the world. It works with governmental agencies at all levels on construction, transportation, environmental, nuclear, energy, industrial, and water problems. Some current examples include the construction of the new 20 Fenchurch Building on the shores of the Thames River in London; the revitalization of the Anacostia Waterfront region in the Washington, DC, area; the expansion of the Metrolinx Rapid Transit system in Toronto, Canada; and the design and planning of the Business Bay project in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The range of capabilities the company now claims is extensive, including the design, production, operation, and maintenance of federal facilities and infrastructure; electronics manufacturing systems; commercial and industrial zones; conveyance and storage systems; bridges, tunnels, pipelines, and terminals; roads; urban development and regeneration projects; nuclear waste systems; refining plants; aviation programs; sports complexes; chemical systems; and all forms of water management, delivery, storage, and treatment systems.

As indicated by the 2015 Stockholm award, CH2M is still intimately involved in a variety of water projects. One current example was the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the Aqua Nueva Water Reclamation Facility in Pima County, Arizona. The challenge there was to find ways of producing enough clean water in one of the most arid regions of the country to meet all of the growing needs of the county, a problem solved by the design and construction of a plant able to reclaim water that would otherwise be returned as unusable to the environment. Another water project currently under way is the Thames Tideway Tunnel being built for a distance of 25 kilometers under the city of London. The purpose of the tunnel is to collect untreated sewage discharges that are currently being dumped directly into the Thames and deliver those discharges to a new wastewater treatment plant where they will be purified for domestic use.

Today CH2M employs more than 20,000 people to serve 5,000 clients in more than 50 countries with a positive impact on more than 10,000 individual communities. The company takes special pride in its efforts to promote diversity within its ranks, with 11 network groups established to promote the special interests of groups such as women, blacks, Hispanics, those with disabilities, LGBT employees, and veterans. It claims to have redistributed $440 million to local minority-, women-, and veteran-owned businesses in the United States.

In 1991, CH2M established the CH2M Foundation (now known as the CH2MHill Foundation) with the purpose of providing support for STEM programs at the high school and college levels. In 2013, the foundation expanded its mission to include the promotion of sustainable communities and the volunteer work of CH2M employees. The foundation’s three major programs currently are Engineers without Borders, whose 15,900 members work with communities to find appropriate solutions for water supply, sanitation, energy, agriculture, civil works and structures; Water for People (W4P), which is attempting to find sustainable solutions to communities without access to safe water supplies; and Bridges to Prosperity, which works to bring health care, education, and markets to communities in remote areas of the world.

Rita R. Colwell (1934–)

Rita Colwell was awarded the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize for her research on waterborne diseases and their impact on human health worldwide. As early as the 1960s, she began studying the Vibrio cholera bacterium, which is responsible for one of the world’s most serious infectious diseases, cholera. She found that the bacterium could survive in a dormant state and be revitalized when environmental conditions became hospitable to that reawakening. The discovery meant that cholera remained a problem in areas where no outbreak was occurring and that prevention techniques were essential to prevent the bacteria from emerging from its dormant state, once more causing a resurgence of the disease. More recently, she has been particularly interested in the relationship between climate change and the spread of waterborne diseases. Her research in the Bay of Bengal, for example, has demonstrated that rising ocean temperatures have a direct and measurable effect on the number of cholera cases being reported in the region.

Rita Rossi was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, on November 23, 1934. She was the seventh of eight children born to Louis and Louise Di Palma Rossi. Her father was an Italian immigrant who had started his own construction company in Beverly, and her mother was a homemaker who was eager to have her children all receive the best possible education. After completing her primary and secondary education in Beverly, Rossi matriculated at Purdue University, from which she received her degree in bacteriology in 1956. Although she had planned to go on to medical school, she decided instead to continue her studies at Purdue in order to stay with her boyfriend of the time, Jack Colwell. She eventually married Colwell in May 1956, gaining her master’s degree in genetics two years later. She then continued her studies in marine biology at the University of Washington, where she received her PhD in the field in 1961.

After receiving her doctorate, Colwell remained at Washington as research assistant professor, a post she held until 1964. She was concurrently a guest research scientist at the National Research Council of Canada, in Ottawa, from 1961 to 1963. In 1964, Colwell was offered a position as assistant professor at Georgetown University, in Washington, DC. She was promoted to associate professor and given tenure two years later, but decided to leave Georgetown in 1972 to accept an appointment as professor of microbiology at the University of Maryland at College Park. She has maintained her affiliation with Maryland ever since, currently serving as distinguished university professor of computational biology. Colwell also currently holds the titles of distinguished university professor at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, senior advisor and chairman emeritus at Canon U.S. Life Sciences, Inc., and president and CEO of CosmosID, Inc.

Throughout her academic career, Colwell has been involved in a host of governmental and nongovernmental activities involved in issues related to marine biology, waterborne diseases, and environmental issues in general. She became associated with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a consultant in 1975 and continued to serve in a variety of other positions with the agency for most of the rest of her career. She has also served as the director of the Sea Grant College at Maryland (1981–1982), the director of the Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies at Maryland (1981–1982), a member of the research advisor committee of the National Science Board (1983–1990), and the founding director and later president of the Center for Marine Biotechnology at Maryland. From 1998 to 2004, Colwell also served as the 11th director of the National Science Foundation.

Colwell’s list of honors and awards is very long and includes 55 honorary doctorates from academic institutions around the world. She is also the recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, from the government of Japan; the 2006 National Medal of Science; and the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize. She is the author, coauthor, and editor of 17 books, including Oceans and Health: Pathogens in the Marine Environment (with Shimshon Belkin, 2004; 2010); Global Change and the Human Prospect: Issues in Population, Science, Technology and Equity (with Thomas F. Malone, 1992); The Door in the Dream: Conversations with Eminent Women in Science (with Elga Wasserman, 2000); and Vibrios in the Environment (1984). Colwell has also published more than 700 scholarly papers in peer-reviewed publications.

Eugene Gangarosa (1926–)

Eugene Gangarosa is an authority in waterborne diseases who has been involved in WASH issues for more than a half century. During his early career, he was especially interested in the etiology of intestinal infections and, in 1959, published an important study on the causes of cholera. The results of that study led Gangarosa to become interested in methods for preventing and treating cholera, especially rehydration therapy. He is sometimes thought of as the father of the field of tropical (or environmental) enteropathy, a condition characterized by the occurrence of frequent intestinal infections, commonly caused by continual oral–fecal contact, especially in young children. In addition to his field research, Gangarosa and his wife, Rose, have been influential philanthropists in creating and promoting institutions to encourage research and education in the field of WASH programs. In the 1980s, he was involved in the creation of the Emory University School of Public Health, where he is now professor emeritus. In 2004, he was also responsible for the creation of the Center for Global Safe WASH at Emory, a joint project of Emory, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Carter Center, CARE, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2005 and 2011, the Gangarosas funded two academic chairs at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health. Since 1994, the couple has also funded and led the Gangarosa International Health Foundation, for the purpose of providing access to safe water for the estimated 2 billion people worldwide who currently do not have that access.

Eugene John Gangarosa was born in Rochester, New York, on August 7, 1926. He attended the University of Rochester, from which he received his AB, MS, and MD degrees in 1950, 1955, and 1954, respectively. He completed his internship at Tripler General Hospital, in Honolulu, in 1955–1956 and his residency at the Walter Reed General Hospital, in Washington, DC, in 1957–1959. While at Walter Reed, he specialized in the study of epidemiology, training that he later continued at the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the CDC from 1964 to 1966.

Gangarosa’s first academic appointment was as assistant professor of medicine and microbiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (1961–1964). During that period, he was also the director of the Pakistan Medical Research Center of the University of Maryland International Center for Medical Research and Training in Lahore (1962–1964) and chief of the Epidemic Intelligence Service epidemiology program (1964). In 1965, Gangarosa began a long relationship with the CDC by accepting an appointment as chief of the Enteric Disease Branch of the Bacterial Diseases Division, a post he held until 1968. He then became director of the Bacterial Diseases Division from 1968 to 1978. Concurrently with this appointment, he also served as an adjunct professor of cellular and molecular biology at the Medical College of Georgia (1976–1978).

In 1978, Gangarosa returned to academia as dean of the faculty of health sciences and professor of public health at the American University of Beirut, where he remained until 1981. He then accepted an appointment at the Emory School of Medicine, where he served as a professor and director of the master of public health program from 1983 to 1989 and interim director of the division of public health from 1989 to 1990. In 1990, Gangarosa officially retired from his post at Emory and was named professor emeritus, a title he continues to hold.

This listing does not begin to adequately describe the variety of posts that Gangarosa has held during his long and busy career. He has, for example, been a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, a member of the WHO expert advisory panel on bacterial diseases, consultant to the U.S. Surgeon General, medical and research consultant to the first of Pathogen Control Associates, Inc., and consultant to the U.S. Department of Agriculture foodborne disease control program.

During his academic career, Gangarosa published more than 120 peer-reviewed papers in scholarly journals, as well as 24 chapters in books on enteric and related diseases and disorders. In 1978, Gangarosa was awarded the CDC Medal of Excellence, the agency’s highest award for distinguished scientific contributions. In 1980, he was appointed a fellow of the American College of Physicians and, in 1991, was recognized with the Thomas Jefferson Award, Emory’s highest award, given to a faculty member who has contributed most to institutional development. He has also received the University of Rochester’s Humanitarian Award, the American Public Health Association’s Distinguished Lectureship award, and the Wade Hampton Frost Award.

Ros Gangarosa has had a distinguished career in education herself, as a teacher of piano and English at both secondary and college levels. She also served as principal of the Lahore American School during the period that her husband was also employed in Pakistan. She has also worked with Eugene on a variety of philanthropic projects at Emory.

Peter H. Gleick (1956–)

Gleick is one of the best known and highly respected authorities on water issues in the world today. In 1987, he cofounded with two generally unnamed “colleagues” the Pacific Institute (PI), whose complete and legal name is the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, located in Oakland, California. Gleick is now the president of the institute. His Web page on the institute’s Web site credits Gleick with refocusing the topic of water from one restricted largely “from the realm of engineers to the world of social justice, sustainability, human rights, and integrated thinking.” The same site credits Gleick with producing the first analysis of climate change on water resources, some of the earliest research on water-based conflicts, and defining the basic needs of humans for water and the right of humans to have access to water. In 2003, Gleick was awarded one of the prestigious MacArthur fellowships for his work in the field of water issues.

Peter Henry Gleick was born in New York City on December 24, 1956, to Donen and Beth Gleick. His father was an attorney and his mother, the author of children’s books. He attended public school in Manhattan, but experienced a fascination early in his life for the natural world, which was not necessarily on display in the urbanized New York City area. He spent much of his free time as a boy and young man walking through Central Park, visiting Nantucket Island with his parents, and attending science camp in northern Michigan as a teenager. His first specific interest in water issues appears to have been encouraged when he was 16 and attended a National Science Foundation summer program at the University of Southern California. His lifelong interest in the environment seemed already predetermined during these early years.

Gleick matriculated at Yale University in the fall of 1974, where he pursued a degree in engineering and applied science. After earning his BS in that field in 1978, he enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, from which he received his MS and PhD degrees in energy and resources in 1980 and 1986 respectively. While still studying at California, he held a number of jobs in the field of environmental science, including deputy assistant to the governor of California in the state’s Energy and Environment Office, research associate in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, and research and teaching associate at the University of California and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Shortly after receiving his doctorate, he cofounded the PI, with whom he has been associated ever since.

Gleick is the author, coauthor, and editor of 10 books, including Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World’s Fresh Water Resources, Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, and A 21st Century U.S. Water Policy. He has also been involved in the production of the biennial report on freshwater resources, The World’s Water. He is also the author or coauthor of more than a hundred journal articles, peer-reviewed reports, book chapters, and other professional publications.

In addition to his MacArthur fellowship, Gleick has been honored with one of the 2007 Top Environmental Achievement Awards of the Environment Now Foundation, the 2008 “Benny” award of the Business Network Ethics group of South Africa, the United States Water Prize of 2011, the 2011 Ven Te Chow award of the International Water Resources Association, an award as a “Water Hero” for 2012 by the Xylem Corporation, and the first Lifetime Achievement Award of the Silicon Valley Conservation association for 2013.

Gleick’s list of public and professional service positions covers more than a page of his curriculum vitae and includes posts such as member of the editorial boards of the publications Global Change and Human Health, Encyclopedia of Global Change, Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, Environment and Security, Water Policy, Climatic Change, and Environmental Research Letters; member of the board of directors of the Environmental Science and Policy Institute, International Water Resources Association, Middle East Water Information Network, and Blue Planet Network; and member of a number of other organizations, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences Section, California Energy Commission Public Interest Energy Research project, the Gulbenkian Foundation Think Tank on Water and the Future of Mankind, and American Geophysical Union Hydrology Section Water and Society Technical Committee.

In 2012, Gleick was accused of being involved with documents originating with the Heartland Institute, an organization that has raised doubts about climate change in the past. He left office briefly while this claim was being investigated and returned to office after he was cleared of any wrongdoing by an independent investigator. (See “Climate Scientist Peter Gleick Admits He Leaked Heartland Institute Documents, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/21/peter-gleick-admits-leaked-heartland-institute-documents and “Peter Gleick Reinstated after Investigation into Heartland Papers, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/07/local/la-me-gs-peter-gleick-reinstated-after-admitting-obtaining-heartland-papers-20120607, both accessed on September 28, 2015.)

Global Water Partnership

URL: http://www.gwp.org/en/

Global Water Partnership (GWP) was founded in 1996 by a consortium consisting of the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The impetus behind the creation of GWP dates to the 1992 International Conference on Water and the Environment, held in Dublin, which completed its sessions with the adoption of a document, the Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development, which set forth the principles by which water programs should be developed in order to make available a sustainable and accessible source of water for the world’s population. Plans for the development of an international water management agency progressed over the next four years, especially at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, in that year. GWP finally became a reality at an August meeting of the principals in Stockholm and a second meeting of the technical committee in Windhoek, Namibia, in November.

The theoretical principle on which the work of GWP is based is called Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), a working principle that was developed over a number of years during the early stages of the organization’s development. It can be defined as a process that involves the development of land, water, and other resources in such a way as to “maximise economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems.” IWRM is, therefore, a holistic approach to water management that takes account of not only the need for economic development and the best interests of human welfare, but also the continued survival of the natural environment.

Participation in GWP is open to all organizations that accept the general principles embodied in IWRM. As of late 2015, the organization had established 13 regional partnerships, 85 country partnerships, and 3,051 individual partnerships located in 178 countries. The distribution of these partnerships was as follows: Caribbean (22 nations, 92 individuals); Central Africa (6, 164); Central America (7, 184), Central and Eastern Europe (12, 161), Central Asia and Caucasus (9, 161), China (1, 100), Eastern Africa (10, 211), Mediterranean (25, 86), South America (10, 303), South Asia (7, 530), Southeast Asia (10, 249), Southern Africa (12, 323), and West Africa (15, 274). The most common individual partnerships were those with nongovernmental organizations and area networks (37% of all individual partnerships) and governmental or other types of public organizations (26%), followed by research and educational institutions (16%), private sector companies (13%), professional organizations (3%), international organizations (2%), and other types of organizations (3%).

GWP takes a number of approaches in attempting to achieve its general objectives. It is, first of all, an advocacy agency that attempts to inform governmental agencies and other decision-making groups of the nature of water problems the world is facing and the ways in which nations and communities can deal with those problems. GWP also acts as a coordinating agency that brings together stakeholders involved in the resolution of specific water management problems in a given area. The organization also provides access to such group to the technical resources that are available for dealing with a variety of water management issues. Some examples of the type of projects carried out by GWP are the following:

• The nation of Botswana adopted its first Water Act in 1968, but it soon became evident that the act was inadequate for dealing with the country’s serious and ongoing water shortage problems. The government eventually turned to the GWP for advice and assistance in the drafting of a new and revised water plan, which was eventually adopted in 2013. The new plan appears far more likely to help the government in dealing with its ongoing water problems.
• The severity of water and sanitation problems in Karachi, Pakistan, with a population of more than 18 million, was being recognized as early as 2000, but little progress was being made in solving these problems. In 2007, a local water partnership was established by the Hisaar Foundation, a charitable organization working for water and food security. The foundation requested assistance from GWP, which provided a model for dealing with problems similar to those faced by Karachi, along with help in setting up a coordinating committee and organizing meeting. The agency also provided some seed money for initial projects in meeting the city’s water and sanitation needs. These efforts eventually resulted in the formation of partnerships that are realizing some success in attacking the city’s water and sanitation issues.
• Growing concerns over climate change has led to the creation of a number of programs designed to ensure sustainability of water supplies in regions especially at risk for reduction in water resources. In 2011, GWP became part of an effort to assess and develop water resources at risk from climate change in the Lake Cyohoha catchment area between Burundi and Rwanda. GWP’s involvement included the identification of structural problems that were inhibiting the cooperative development of water resources, as well as identifying and coordinating the many groups with interest in resolving the climate change water issues in the region.
• As in many arid regions, water use issues have existed for generations in the Zarafshan River basin region of Uzbekistan. Such issues have become more serious only in recent years, and local officials finally decided to form a partnership with GWP to find ways of dealing with these issues more efficiently. They sought assistance from the organization in development programs to educate residents of the area of the importance of water management, to develop technical expertise in improving water management programs, and to plan for future developments to improve the resiliency of water resources from the Zarafshan.

An especially useful feature of the GWP Web site is its Tool Box section, which contains a number of suggestions (“tools”) that can be used in solving water management issues, case studies showing how such tools have been used in the past, a summary of the critical challenges faced in the area of water management worldwide, and some issues that cut across specific water management problems, such as gender, youth, and financing. The Web page also contains an excellent collection of relevant publications.

Groundwater Foundation

The mission of the Groundwater Foundation is to educate the general public so as to ensure a sustainable supply of pure groundwater for future generations. The organization was founded in 1985 by Susan S. Seacrest, a homemaker living in Nebraska’s Platte Valley. A year earlier, Seacrest had read an article about the potential contamination of groundwater in the region’s aquifers and wondered whether such a possibility might be related to the ongoing digestive problems being experienced by her young son. She decided to contact a researcher quoted in the article, Dr. Dennis Weisenberger, who encouraged her to learn more about groundwater issues and to consider actions she could take in support of that valuable resource. “Never one to shy from a challenge,” as she wrote in her 2000 review of the foundation’s history, she moved forward with her own research on groundwater, leading to her 1985 action in creating the Groundwater Foundation.

The Groundwater Foundation is a membership organization, open to all individuals interested in the goals and activities of the association. Membership dues account for only 5 percent of the organization’s income; however, the remainder coming from grants (56% of all income in 2013), supporters and contributions (32%), and other sources (7%). Among its current sponsors and supporters, the foundation lists the U.S. Geological Survey, the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, the Nebraska Environmental Trust, Archer Daniel Midlands, the Aspegren Foundation, The Cooper Foundation, Disneyland, ExxonMobil, Nebraska Public Power District, Olsson Associates, Teledyne Isco, Valley Irrigation, and the Valmont Foundation.

The foundation has also developed a working relationship with a number of groups through programs designed to carry out its educational mission. In addition to a number of sponsors and supporters, the list of partners includes groups such as 1 percent for the Planet, Community Services Fund, Girl Scouts Spirit of Nebraska, Marshfield Utilities, National Ground Water Association, Nebraska Pharmacists Association, Nebraska Public Power District, Nonprofit Association of the Midlands, Science Olympiad, Senninger Irrigation, Southern Nevada Water Authority, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. EPA Water Sense program.

The Groundwater Foundation sponsors a wide variety of events for individuals and communities, with the goal of promoting better understanding of groundwater issues. Some examples include:

• Science Olympiad events, in which Olympiad participants select a project related to groundwater issues suggested by the foundation that they can submit for their project.
• The Girl Scouts’ “Let’s Keep It Clean” program, in which members of the Girl Scouts can complete groundwater projects, through which they can earn a variety of uniform patches.
• Groundwater Guardian, a program through which the foundation recognizes communities of all types for local groundwater education and protection activities, and provides tools, resources, and motivation.
• Groundwater Guardian Green Sites, which focuses on green spaces, such as golf courses, parks, educational and business campuses, for implementing groundwater-friendly practices as part of site maintenance.
• Nebraska Wellhead Protection Network, a foundation-managed program that brings together agencies and organizations that help communities develop and implement plans for the protection of wellhead installations in Nebraska.
• Growing Groundwater Awareness, a project in which the foundation works with individual communities to develop programs to educate their citizens about groundwater issues and work toward the implementation of sustainable groundwater use. Examples of successful programs are available on the foundation’s Web site.
• National Conference, a biennial meeting that brings together supporters, partners, members, constituents, and the general public to learn and share groundwater education and protection experiences.

The foundation produces two regular newsletters, “The Aquifer,” a quarterly publication that contains current groundwater news, along with news about foundation events, programs, project, and other information; and “Recharge Report,” a bimonthly electronic newsletter that also features water news and news about foundation affairs. Of special interest to those interested in groundwater issues are two sections on the organization’s Web site providing useful information on such topics, “Get Informed” and “Kids’ Corner.”

Thomas Hawksley (1807–1893)

Hawksley was widely regarded during the second half of the 19th century as one of the two most eminent water engineers in the world. He was credited with the invention of a number of devices for the control of water storage and management, as well as the design of water distribution systems for most of the major cities of England after about 1850. A recent biography of Hawksley in Water World magazine called him “one of the greatest 19th-century water engineers,” although the same article bemoans the fact that he is “virtually forgotten” by water engineers and historians today.

Thomas Hawksley was born on July 12, 1807, in Arnold, Nottinghamshire, England, to John and Mary (Whittle) Hawksley. He attended Nottingham Grammar School until the age of 15, at which time he was articled (became an apprentice) to Edward Stavely, an architect and surveyor in Nottingham. At the completion of his apprenticeship, Hawksley himself became a partner in Stavely’s firm, then to become known as Stavely, Hawksley, and Jolland. The firm specialized in water projects, although they also took on a number of jobs involving the construction and installation of gas supply projects.

In addition to operating his own business at Stavely, Hawksley, and Jolland, Hawksley was employed by the Trent Waterworks Company, which was responsible for supplying water to his hometown of Nottingham. (The company was later reorganized as the Nottingham Waterworks Company.) His first assignment with Trent was the construction of an additional water supply system for the delivery of water to Nottingham, a task he undertook at the age of 23.

A major focus of much of Hawksley’s early work was the design of systems that could keep the water it delivered pure from contamination that would result in the spread of contagious diseases such as cholera. He was faced with that problem early on in his career when cholera struck his hometown of Nottingham in 1832, apparently at least partly as a result of water pipes that were unable to keep out the organisms causing the disease. In attempting to deal with this problem, Hawksley designed a number of system components that fit more tightly and that could be used more easily so as to make the system completely watertight and impenetrable to cholera and other disease-causing organisms. He was so successful in these efforts that his systems were widely recognized as being responsible for saving very large numbers of lives in England during a major outbreak of cholera in 1848–1849. By that time, he had been responsible for the design and installation of water systems in most of England’s major cities and towns, including Liverpool, Sheffield, Leicester, Lincoln, Leeds, Derby, Darlington, Oxford, Cambridge, Sunderland, Wakefield, and Northampton. In addition to water delivery system, Hawksley became involved in the construction of dams and reservoirs in which community water supplies were collected and store. He was also involved with the construction of sewage and drainage systems in a number of cities and towns, although not to the extent of his work with water systems.

By some accounts, Hawksley’s most notable invention was a water tap that could seal a pipe tightly with a simple turn of the handle. The device superseded an earlier model of tap in which the handle was turned only a quarter turn, failing to produce the tight seal needed to protect the system from contamination. Hawksley’s device was at first regarded as unworkable because of the mechanical constraints it placed on the system. He was able to work through these constraints, however, eventually producing a product that many people in the world take as a given without a second thought, a reliable flow of pure water at a simple turn of a tap.

Hawksley was also involved with the design and construction of natural gas delivery systems and served as an engineer for the Nottingham Gas Light and Coke Company simultaneously with his work at the Nottingham Waterworks Company for a period of more than 50 years. Later in life, he also served as the first president of the Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers from 1863 to 1866. He was also elected president of the Institution of Civil Engineers from 1872 to 1873. The English Institution of Mechanical Engineers still holds an annual lecture, the Thomas Hawksley Lecture, and awards an annual gold medal in his honor.

Hawksley died at his home in Kensington, London, on September 23, 1893. He was the progenitor of a family that would remain affiliated with water projects for many generations. His son, Charles Hawksley (1839–1917), grandson Kenneth Phipson Hawksley (1869–1924), and great grandson, Thomas Edwin Hawksley (1897–1972), all became notable water engineers in their own right.

Michael R. Hoffmann (1946–)

Hoffmann was awarded a $400,000 grant in 2011 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for research on a self-contained, solar-powered toilet that can be used by communities that currently have no access to any other type of toilet facilities. Hoffmann’s toilet looks not that different from the portable toilets that are seen at construction sites, outdoor festivals, and other settings, but it operates on a very different principle. The toilet is powered by a photovoltaic panel that provides the energy needed to break down water and waste products produced in the toilet to hydrogen gas and other products. The hydrogen gas is then stored in hydrogen fuel cells that can be used to produce energy on demand, as during the evening when there is no sunlight. Hoffmann predicts that a single such toilet would be able to serve about 500 people per day. Test toilets currently cost about $2,000 each, but that cost can be significantly reduced when the toilets are produced in volume, one goal of the Gates grant.

Michael Robert Hoffmann was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, on November 13, 1946. He attended Northwestern University, from which he received his BA in 1968, and Brown University, where he earned his PhD in 1974. He completed his postdoctoral studies in environmental engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1973 to 1975. At the completion of his postdoctoral studies, Hoffmann accepted an appointment as assistant professor of civil and mining engineering at the University of Minnesota, where he was promoted to associate professor in 1978. In 1980, Hoffmann was invited to return to Caltech and become associate professor of environmental science and engineering. He has remained at Caltech ever since, gaining promotion to full professor in 1986 and then being named James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science in 1996, a title he continues to hold. Hoffmann also served as dean of graduate studies at Caltech from 2002 to 2008.

Hoffmann’s research has covered a wide range of topics in chemistry during his academic career, including atmospheric chemistry, chemical kinetics, catalytic oxidation and reduction, photochemistry, photocatalysis, nanotechnology, sonochemistry, photo-electrochemistry, pulsed-power plasma chemistry, environmental water chemistry, and microbiology. He has long been interested also in the practical applications of his research in real-life situations where people’s health and lives depend on improving their access to safe water and sanitation systems. His invention of the solar-powered toilet is the most recent result of this line of research.

Hoffmann is the author or coauthor of more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and the holder of seven patents based on his research. His honors include an NCAA Athletic Scholarship in track and field (1964–1968), the Alexander von Humboldt Prize (1991), E. Gordon Young Creative Advances Award (1995), ACS Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology Award (2001), Jack Edward McKee Medal of the Water Environment Federation (2003), and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Scientist Award (2004). He has also held a number of honorary teaching and research positions, such as the Lady Davis Distinguished Lecturer at Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1996), Davis Distinguished Lecturer at the University of New Orleans (2001), Dodge Distinguished Lecturer at Yale University (2002), Johnston Distinguished Lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley (2003), R. Gordon Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Toronto (2003), Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Tsinghua University, Beijing (2008), Innolec Lecturer at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic (2008), Distinguished Lecturer at National Taiwan University, Taiwan (2008), Erudite Distinguished Scholar, State of Kerala, India (2010), and Distinguished Visiting Chair Professor, National Taiwan University, Taipei (2010). Hoffmann has been elected a fellow of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (2000) and a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2011).

International Water Resources Association

The International Water Resources Association (IWRA) is a non-profit, non-governmental network of experts from a variety of fields who are interested in all aspects of water resource issues. The organization was created in 1971 largely through the efforts of Chinese American hydraulic engineer Ven Te Chow, then professor of civil and hydrosystems engineering at the University of Illinois. At the time of its origin, IWRA had 195 individual members, two corporate members, and five institutional members.

A major factor in the formation of IWRA was planning then in progress for the First World Water Conference, “Water for the Human Environment,” scheduled to be held in Chicago. The conference was a huge success, with attendees from 62 countries offering 175 papers on many aspects of the conference topic. Professor Chow was elected president of the association and served in that post until 1979. The first publication produced by IWRA was a newsletter called “Water International.” In 1975, that publication was reconstituted as a professional journal with the same name. Professor Chow also served as the first editor-in-chief of the journal.

Throughout its history, the primary activity of IWRA has been the World Water Congress, held (usually) every three years in a different location. The 15th World Water Congress was held in Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 25–29, 2015, and the 16th congress is scheduled to be held in Cancun, Mexico, from May 29 to June 2, 2017. Over the years, the organization has continued to expand the number and variety of its activities.

Early on in its history, IWRA took steps to emphasize the international character of its mission. It established so-called geographic committees, whose goal it was (and is) to focus on water-related issues of special concern to specific countries or regions. Currently, four such committees are in existence, committees for China, India, Japan, and Oceania. The association also began outreach campaigns to and programs with a number of nongovernmental organizations, such as The World Bank, the International Development Bank, the WHO, the Organization of American States, and the United Nations Environment Programme.

Another step forward occurred in 1994 with the formation of the World Water Council (WWC). This organization was created at the suggestion put forward by leaders of a number of disparate national, regional, and international water organizations as a way to “unite the disparate, fragmented, and ineffectual efforts in global water management,” according to the IWRA Web site. The founding committee of the council held its first meeting a year later, marking the origin of a major international advocate for water policy worldwide.

IWRA sponsors no events other than the World Water Congress and produces only one other publication, a newsletter, “IWRA Update.” The association does offer a number of awards annually, Crystal Drop Award for individuals or organizations that have made laudable contributions to the improvement of the world’s water situation; the Ven Te Chow Memorial Award and Lecture, in honor of the association’s first president; the IWRA Distinguished Lecture Award; the Water International Best Paper Award, based on “originality, innovation, technical quality, and contribution to water resources management”; the Award for Excellence in Water Resources Management, which recognizes regional, national, or local institutions that have exhibited sustained excellence in water resources management; and the Young IWRA Member Scholarship Award, which recognizes a member under the age of 33 for an outstanding contribution to the management of water resources.

John L. Leal (1858–1914)

Leal was an American physician who is credited with being the first individual to recommend the use of chlorine for the large-scale purification of a municipal water treatment facility.

During the late 19th century, the city of Jersey City, New Jersey, like many urban areas at the time, experienced a number of widespread occurrences of waterborne diseases, such as typhoid fever and diarrhea, which resulted in hundreds or thousands of deaths and hospitalizations. In an effort to deal with this problem, the city contracted with Jersey City Water Supply Company to construct a new facility to provide safe and pure water to the municipality. After the new plant had been built, it was discovered that the plant failed at certain times of the year, such as on days following major storms. On those occasions, the water passing out of the plant was contaminated with bacteria and other disease-causing agents. As a consequence of this defect, the city sued the water company, refusing to pay the cost of construction.

Called in as an expert witness by the water company, Leal suggested a simple “fix” for the problem. He proposed adding water solutions of chloride of lime (calcium hypochlorite; Ca(ClO)₂) to water passing through the plant as a way of killing bacteria and producing safe and pure water. Leal based his suggestion on a procedure he had long practiced as health officer in Paterson, New Jersey. The city approved Leal’s suggestion, and a model plant was built to test the chlorination hypothesis. The plant worked as Leal had predicted, the city dropped its suit against the water company, and chlorination as a way of purifying water spread rapidly across the country over the next decade.

John Laing Leal was born in Andes, New York, on May 5, 1858. Leal’s father was John Rose Leal, a physician who served in the Civil War. During the siege of Charleston (South Carolina) Harbor in 1863, Leal became seriously ill, probably with amoebic dysentery, caused by drinking contaminated water. The senior Leal suffered from the condition over the next 19 years, and his death was probably a result of the disease.

When Leal was nine years old, his family moved to Paterson, where Leal was to spend the rest of his life. He attended the Paterson Seminary before matriculating at Princeton College (now Princeton University) in 1876. He earned his BA and MA degrees from Princeton in 1880 and 1883 respectively. Leal then continued his studies at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he received his MD degree in 1884.

After completing his studies at Columbia, Leal returned to Paterson to open a private practice. This phase of his life did not last very long as he accepted an appointment as city physician for Paterson only two years later, in 1886. He continued his affiliation with the city of Paterson for the rest of his life, serving as health inspector in 1891 and health officer from 1892 to 1899, when he became an advisor to the East Jersey Water Company. In 1911, toward the end of his life, Leal was invited to return to public service as president of the Paterson Board of Health, a post he held until his death at the age of 56 on March 13, 1914, in Paterson.

In 2013, the board of directors of the AWWA voted to establish a new award in Leal’s honor. The award is now given annually to an individual or organization that has made “a notable and outstanding public health contribution to the water profession.”

Sidney Loeb (1917–2008)

Loeb is generally credited with developing (along with Canadian researcher Srinivasa Sourirajan) the process of reverse osmosis of seawater, currently the most popular industrial method of desalination. Reverse osmosis is a process by which pressure is applied to seawater, forcing it through a semipermeable membrane in order to remove particles of materials (such as ions of sodium, potassium, calcium, and chlorine) that make the water unsuitable for human consumption. The process is referred to as reverse osmosis since it acts against the normal process of osmosis that occurs when solutions of two different concentrations are placed on opposite sides of a semipermeable membrane. Loeb and Sourirajan’s research resulted in the rapid development not only of a new and effective method of water desalination, but also of a technology that had a host of other applications, as in the beverage, food, drug, chemical, and biochemical industries.

Sidney Loeb was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on May 13, 1917. His family moved to Chicago when he was only two years of age, a city where he was to spend his early years. After completing his primary and secondary education, he enrolled at the University of Illinois, from which he received his BS degree in chemical engineering in 1941. He then moved to Los Angeles, where he spent 20 years working in the fields of petrochemicals, rocket motors, and nuclear reactors before deciding to return to school to continue his education. To do so, he entered at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he earned his MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering in 1959 and 1964, respectively. It was during this period that he worked with fellow graduate student Sourirajan to develop the modern system of reverse osmosis with their doctoral advisor Samuel Yuster. In 1964, Loeb and Sourirajan received a patent for “High flow porous membranes for separating water from saline solutions.”

A year after receiving their patent, Loeb was hired by the city of Coalinga, California, to design a small reverse osmosis desalination plant for the community. The plant went into operation in June 1965, producing 20 cubic meters of fresh drinking water per day, an insignificant amount from a practical standpoint, but an important step in validating the industrial validity of the new technology.

Shortly after his success with the Coalinga plant, Loeb was invited to build a similar facility for the Negev Institute for Arid Zone Research at Beersheba, Israel. The plant began operation in 1967, producing 200 cubic meters of potable water for the Kibbutz Yotvata community near Beersheba. Loeb then accepted an offer to remain at the Negev Institute (later to become a part of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev) to become professor of chemical engineering and to continue his research on reverse osmosis desalination, a post he held for 15 more years. During this time, Loeb continued to develop improvements in his reverse osmosis process, always motivated by his understanding and appreciation of the need to find new and more efficient ways of producing clean water in regions where that resource was not already readily available.

Loeb retired from active research and teaching in 1986. He died at his home in Omer, Israel, on December 11, 2008.

Millennium Water Alliance

The Millennium Water Alliance (MWA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose purpose it is to find ways of delivering safe water and sanitation systems to individuals and communities who currently do not have access to such resources. The organization was formed in 2003 by a consortium of nongovernmental organizations working in the field of safe water and sanitation for developing nations. The immediate impetus for the group’s creation was a public statement by then secretary of state of the United States Colin Powell’s intention to “reduce by half, the proportion of people without access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation” by the year 2015. The goal was achieved two years early through the efforts of groups such as MWA, which then went on to focus on additional goals of safe water and sanitation for the world’s poorest communities.

MWA currently consists of members, most of whom have their headquarters in the United States. They are Aguayuda, Catholic Relief Services, Global Water, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, Living Water International, Water.org, Water4, Water Missions, CARE, Food for the Hungry, HELVETAS Swiss, Lifewater, Pure Water, Water Aid, and W4P. Funding for MWA’s programs comes from a variety of governmental, industrial, and charitable organizations, including the Coca-Cola Foundation and the Coca-Cola Foundation Africa, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Global Environment and Technology Foundation, Craigslist Foundation, U.S. Department of State, P&G, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Wallace Genetic Foundation.

MWA currently operates five major programs, each of which is funded by a specific partner or group of partners. For example, the Kenya program is designed to provide safe WASH programs for rural regions of that country and is funded primarily by the USAID. Other programs include the Ethiopia program (funded by the Hilton Foundation), Latin America program (Coca-Cola Latin America and the FEMSA Foundation), A-WASH program, and the Circuit Rider program, designed to support small water supply systems in a diverse collection of countries that includes the United States, Canada, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica.

In addition to WASH programs such as these, MWA carries on an ambitious and active program of advocacy for WASH efforts in the United States and other countries around the world. The goal of this program is to better inform decision-and policy-makers of the need for better WASH activities in developing nations, provide more information about the types of technology and economic programs that are available, tell success stories from MWA and other organizations’ efforts in the field, and offer advice and consultations for new efforts in developing countries. The organization understands and bases its advocacy efforts on the reality that national and state governments are ultimately responsible for the success of most WASH programs, but that specific efforts must be based on the needs and desires of individual communities.

Peter Morgan (1943–)

Morgan is an English-born environmentalist who is now a citizen of Zimbabwe, winner of the 2013 Stockholm Water Prize. The prize was awarded for “his work to protect the health and lives of millions of people through improved sanitation and water technologies.” A number of devices have been invented over the decades to make safe water and efficient sanitation more readily accessible to people in developing countries. The problem often is that these devices are too expensive for most communities and individuals to make use of. Morgan’s inventions have been designed to overcome this limitation, to provide simple water systems, inexpensive toilets, and other devices that are cheap and easy to use as well as meeting the needs of those without access to such resources.

One such device is the Blair ventilated pit latrine (also known as the VIP [for ventilated improved pit] toilet system), which has now become the most commonly available toilet in the country of Zimbabwe. About a half million of the devices are currently in use in the nation. The latrine operates on the principle that sunlight heating the top of the unit causes an upward draft through the structure, removing odors and insects that would otherwise make the latrine unpleasant and unhealthy to use. Morgan invented the system in the 1970s when the Blair Research Laboratory was part of the then Rhodesian Ministry of Health. (For a diagram and explanation of the structure’s operation, see http://www.bellatrines.co.nz/how_it_works.html.) Another of Morgan’s inventions is a so-called bush pump that is made of simple, inexpensive materials that can be easily assembled without expensive equipment and specialized knowledge. (For detailed information about and illustrations of the pump, see http://www.rural-water-supply.net/en/implementation/public-domain-handpumps/bush-pump.)

Peter Roger Morgan was born on October 2, 1943, in Wellingborough, England. He attended the Romford Royal Liberty Grammar School in Essex, where he received “A” level passes in botany, zoology, chemistry, and physics. He then entered the University of Hull, from which he received his BSc degree in zoology in 1964 and his PhD in marine biology in 1968. At the suggestion of his doctoral advisor, Morgan then accepted an appointment as research fellow in limnology at the University of Malawi, studying the fish and fisheries of Lake Chilwa, near the city of Zomba. By the end of that assignment, Morgan was beginning to feel an affinity to Africa, and he stayed on as a medical research officer at the Blair Research Laboratory in Zimbabwe, a post he held from 1972 to 1990. He then stayed on as an advisor to the Ministry of Health. In 1993, Morgan was appointed the first chairman of the Mvuramanzi Trust, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that he cofounded and which was established to deal with water and sanitation needs of the country of Zimbabwe not then being met by other programs. At the same time, Morgan accepted an appointment as the director of Aquamor, a small Zimbabwe-based company for research and development of water and sanitation projects in developing countries. Morgan left his post at Mvuramanzi in 1996, but continues to be affiliated with Aquamor.

In addition to his research and development activities, Morgan has long been involved in a variety of professional associations. He has served as the editor of the Zimbabwe Science News, president of the Zimbabwe Scientific Association, member of the Medical Research Council of Zimbabwe, and member of the Management Board of the Zimbabwe Institute of Water and Sanitation Development. He is the author of two books, more than 100 scholarly papers, and 66 editions of the Blair Research Bulletin. In addition to the Stockholm Water Prize, he has been honored with the 1976 P.H. Haviland Award of the Zimbabwe Institution of Engineers; 1983 Zimbabwe Scientific Association Gold Medal Award for outstanding scientific research; 1986 Certificate of Distinction of the Research Council of Zimbabwe; 1986 International Inventors Award, presented by the king of Sweden; 1997 Paul Harris Fellow of the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International; 2009 AMCOW AfricaSan Award for Technical Innovation in Sanitation; and 2012 RWSN Award for Lifetime Services to Rural Water Supply. In 1991, he was awarded an MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II.

Pacific Institute

The PI is a nonprofit research institution devoted to the study of global water issues and the development of proposals for the creation of policies for the sustainable use and management of global water resources. The institute’s full and legal name is the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security. PI was founded in 1987 by environmentalist Peter Gleick and two colleagues with the purpose of “creat[ing] a healthier planet and sustainable communities.” Among the many directions in which that mission statement may have led, the institute has chosen to deal with water issues and most recently, and in particular, on the interrelationship of those issues with global climate change. The organization’s offices are located in Oakland, California, and its operating budget in 2014 was about $2.25 million. Gleick continues to serve as president of the organization.

On its Web site, PI outlines the general approach it uses in attacking the problems in which it is interested. The primary elements of that approach include:

• Improving understanding, by providing decision-makers with the information they need to make and carry out appropriate policies. This information may come in the form of reports, briefings, fact sheets, curricula, tools, conferences, other types of materials, and training sessions designed for target audiences.
• “Releasing trapped knowledge,” a process by which information generally known to the academic and other specialized communities is made available to workers in the field and the general public.
• Partnering with other organizations, which may include groups from the smallest community groups to international nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations. A sample of the groups with which PI currently partners includes the Alliance for Water Efficiency, California Urban Water Conservation Council, Ditching Dirty Diesel, Oakland Climate Action Coalition, Oxfam America, and World Vision.
• Developing “practical innovative solutions, management incentives, and economic drivers” for groups in the private and public sectors by providing information on “best practices” for dealing with a variety of problems.
• Initiating and participating in problem-solving activities that involve a variety of groups by suggesting methods by which stakeholders with a wide variety of opinions can come to consensus.
• Promoting justice and democratic decision-making, a process achieved by bringing new and diverse voices to the discussion of a topic.
• Conducting extensive outreach, which goes beyond simply publishing reports and other useful materials to include making sure that those materials actually reach the people and groups for whom they were intended.

Much of the institute’s work focuses on a number of currently important issues that, as of late 2015, included: The Human Right to Water; Sustainable Water Management—Local to Global; Corporate Water Stewardship; Environmental Health and Justice; Empowering People and Communities; Climate Change Vulnerability and Resilience; Water and Poverty; Water and Conflict; WaterEnergy Nexus; and Water, Food, and Agriculture. Detailed information about each of these topics is available on the PI Web site at http://pacinst.org/issues/. The Water and Poverty section, as an example, provides additional information on subtopics such as Mobile Phone Solutions for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH); Community Choices System; Climate Change Resilience in Developing Countries; Multiple-Use Water Services; Water Quality; Green Jobs and Water; Water and Environmental Justice; and Recognizing the Human Right to Water.

A particularly interesting and useful service provided by the institute is the “Tools” section of its Web site. This page contains a number of resources that individuals and groups can use to deal with a number of common water-related problems. The recommended tools are also arranged in a variety of ways, such as tools by issue, tools for water managers, tools for business, and tools for community action. Some examples of the kinds of tools that are available are californiadrought.org, a Web site that provides a host of information on the California drought that can answer questions about the drought and provide suggestions for dealing with various aspects of the drought; River Friendly Calculator, a tool designed in particular for residents of the Sacramento area to help them maintain their environment, while reducing their carbon footprint; WECalc, a program designed to help homeowners calculate their own domestic water use and find ways of reducing that use; WeTap, which serves as a guide to public drinking water locations; The World’s Water Series, a collection of biennial reports on the status of the world’s water resources; and Water Conflict Chronology, a summary of disputes over water resources locally and regionally that have taken place throughout recorded history.

Bindeshwar Pathak (1943–)

Pathak is sometimes known as “the million toilet man” in recognition of the change he has brought to India in reducing the rate of open defecation in the nation. The practice of open defecation has a very long history in India and other parts of the world, where an estimated 1–2 billion people still practice this unhygienic act. According to Indian tradition, for example, one should not defecate in the vicinity of a place where people live; instead, they should go off some distance, dig a hole, and then cover the hole with dirt, leaves, and other materials. This tradition arose, of course, untold centuries before anyone knew about the way in which diseases are spread by open defecation. And since old traditions do not die easily, many people in India and other developing nations of the world prefer to continue the practice of open defecation, especially when they know nothing about the health consequences of such an act.

One of the most outspoken and successful of critics against open defecation, certainly in India, and probably in the world, is Bindeshwar Pathak. Pathak was born on April 2, 1943, in Rampur, Bihar state, India, to an upper-class family belonging to the Brahmin caste. He learned very early about the strict divisions that exist among castes in India, especially the disregard in which the lowest castes, the so-called untouchables, are held. The story is told that, as a child, he accidentally came into contact with an untouchable woman. As punishment for this event, his grandmother forced him to eat cow dung as a way of understanding how completely unacceptable such an act is. The punishment apparently had an opposite effect, however, as it caused Pathak to think about the level of degradation in which the lower castes were forced to live and the simple, healthy features of modern life from which they were excluded, safe sanitation being one.

After completing his secondary education, Pathak matriculated at Patna University, in Patna, Bihar, from which he received his bachelor’s degree in sociology (1964), master’s degrees in sociology and English (1980), a doctorate in English (1985), and another doctorate in English literature (1994). Even at this early age, he was thinking and writing about sanitation issues, two of his qualifying papers being on “Liberation of scavengers through low cost sanitation” for his doctorate and “Eradication of scavenging and environmental sanitation in India: a sociological study” for his sociology degree.

Pathak’s earliest experience with a social movement came in 1968 when he volunteered to work with the Bhangi-Mukti (scavengers’ liberation) Cell of the Bihar Gandhi Centenary Celebrations Committee. The general group had been formed in honor of the work of Mahatma Gandhi and the specific committee, to find ways of liberating the Bhangi (toilet-cleaners) from their unpleasant tasks. The cell selected Pathak to conduct a survey of the problem and come up with ideas for improving the sanitation facilities then generally available to all but the highest castes in India. Pathak later reflected that he was “totally unprepared” for the challenge.

This handicap did not prevent him from setting out on his assignment, however. The turning point in his work for the committee—and, as it turns out—in his life was a visit he made to the town of Bettiah, where he lived for three months, observing the life of the lowest castes at firsthand. He eventually came to the conclusion, he later said, that two core problems of his work were inextricably related: the fate of the lower castes and the sanitation systems available to most Indians. He realized that his challenge was to find ways of “overcom[ing] the violence of caste through non-violent means” by “develop[ing] an effective and affordable toilet system (as an alternative to the expensive Western-style flush toilet and centralized water-borne sewage system) so that manual scavenging could be eliminated and the scavenging dalits freed and rehabilitated in other gainful occupation.” With that realization, he set out to educate himself about the technology and economics of simple toilet construction and then to pass on that information to individual Indians for whom open defecation was still the primary means of defecation. In 1970, Pathak founded the Sulabh International Social Service Organization as a means for formalizing the research and activities needed to achieve these goals. Today, more than 50,000 volunteers work for the organization, carrying out research, fund-raising, education, and other activities related to the development and use of simple toilets that can be installed in any home in India.

The best known and most popular system developed by Pathak is called the two-pit pour-flush compost toilet, also known as Sulabh Shauchalaya, or, literally, “easy access to sanitation.” This system consists of a toilet pan to which are connected two drains, each leading to a leach pit. At first, one drain is open, and the other closed. Wastes travel out of the toilet pan into the open pit, where liquid wastes leak into the ground and solid wastes are allowed to dry for use as manure. When the first pit is full, the drain pipe to that pit is closed and the other drain pipe opened. After a period of about 18 months, the wastes in the first pit have decayed and are available for use in agriculture or other areas.

The list of Pathak’s honors is, according to his Facebook page, “too long to be put in the chapter.” They include the Padma Bhushan award from the Government of India, mention in the 2003 Global 500 Roll of Honour, the Energy Globe Award, the Dubai International Award for Best Practices, the Indira Gandhi Priyadarshini Award for Environment, the Stockholm Water Prize for 2009, the 2013 Legend of Planet award from the French senate, and the International Saint Francis Prize for the Environment of the Italian government.

Rajendra Singh (1959–)

Singh is an activist for water conservation in India who was named a winner of the Stockholm Water Prize in 2015 “for his innovative water restoration efforts, improving water security in rural India, and for showing extraordinary courage and determination in his quest to improve the living conditions for those most in need.” Singh is sometimes known as the “waterman of India” because of the significant changes he has brought about through education and technological development in many parts of rural India.

Singh is currently chair of the governing board of Tarun Bharat Sangh (India Youth Association), an organization whose purpose it is to “bring dignity and prosperity to the life of destitute section of the nation through sustainable development measures.” The organization was originally founded in 1975 by a group of professors and students at the University of Rajasthan, although it notes that the organization’s “true origin” should probably be traced to a decade later, when four young men in the organization decided to move to a rural area and live in the small village of Kisohri in the Alwar district. There they opened a school for children as a way of beginning to bring modern education and technology to the region. They soon became discouraged, however, when villagers seemed to take little or no interest in the men’s projects. Eventually, the men found greater acceptance in the neighboring village of Bhikampura, and the first successful outreach for Tarun Bharat Sangh in rural India was under way.

Rajendra Singh was born on August 6, 1959, in the village of Daula in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. His father was a farmer who was responsible for managing a plot of land 60 acres in size. Young Rajendra received his education in the local village, where he first came into contact with a member of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, an event that was to change his life. He readily adopted the principles of Gandhism and decided to devote his life to helping less fortunate people improve their lives. One of these first actions in this direction was his participation in a local alcoholism eradication program designed to help people overcome their addiction to the substance.

After completing his high school education, Singh enrolled at the Bhartiya Rishikul Ayurvedic Mahavidyalaya College in Barot, from which he later received his degree in ayurvedic medicine and surgery. Ayurvedic medicine is a very old system of healing based on the belief that good health depends on a balance among mind, body, and spirit. The primary objectives of the practice are to achieve and maintain good health as a way of preventing disease, although techniques are available for treating specific physical and mental disorders. Singh decided to put his training to work by starting his own practice in ayurvedic medicine in his home village. At the time, he also became increasingly interested in political movements designed to provide aid to the less fortunate, eventually founding the local chapter of a group working for such purposes known as Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini (Student-Youth Struggle Battalion). Singh then decided to continue his own education, enrolling at a college in Barot affiliated with Allahabad University, where he majored in Hindi literature.

Upon completing his formal education in 1980, Singh took a job with the federal government as a National Service Volunteer. His first assignment was at an adult education program in the Dausa district of Rajasthan. It was during this period of service that he learned about and became a member of Tarun Bharat Sangh and set out to work in the villages. By chance, the region where he ended up living and working was one of the most arid regions in India, where farmers had traditionally practiced water use techniques that continually drained the region’s water table without making any provision for recharging that resource. Singh’s life was changed at one point when a local farmer pointed out to him that his (Singh’s) efforts to educate local children meant far less than helping farmers understand the destructive nature of their water management techniques and find better ways to use their limited water resources in a sustainable manner.

Although Singh had little or no formal training in water conservation technology, he decided to educate himself, largely by studying methods that farmers in the region had once used to capture and store their previous water resources. The key to that technology was the construction of earthen dams (johads) that captured the abundant waters that fell during monsoon season and preserved that water until it was needed during the dry season for irrigating crops. By reminding local farmers of this traditional method of water conservation and beginning to restore abandoned johads in the region, Singh and his neighbors were able to rebuild the traditional system in a matter of only three years, turning the region from a desperately arid landscape into one that could once again sustain crops. By the time Singh had been awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 2001, his teams had constructed and restored more than 4,500 johads in 850 villages in Rajasthan, and by the time he won the Stockholm Water Prize in 2015, those numbers had increased to 8,600 johads in more than 1,000 villages.

Singh’s work has now extended far beyond the restoration and construction of johads. He has organized a number of “water marches” designed to draw people’s attention to water issues and to educate them about actions they can take to deal with such issues, has organized five major national conferences on water and other environmental issues, has worked to defeat the proposed Loharinag Pala Hydro Power Project on the Bhagirathi River, an important tributary of the Ganges River, and led a campaign to improve protection of the Aravali wildlife area that resulted in the closing of more than 1,000 polluting mines in Rajasthan. In addition to the Magsaysay and Stockholm awards, Singh has received the Indira Gandhi Environment Award of the government of India, the Joseph C. John Award, and the International River Prize.

Stockholm International Water Institute

The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) was founded in 1991 by the city of Stockholm, Sweden, for the purpose of improving the world’s understanding of the importance of water to human survival, the threats that water resources currently face, and the steps that taken be taken to ensure a sustainable access to pure water resources for the world’s population. SIWI is funded by the Swedish government and is managed by a board of directors of 10 experts in the field of water technology, economics, management, and related fields, along with a staff of more than 70 individuals who oversee general administrative and programmatic departments. The five major themes around which SIWI activities are organized are water governance; transboundary water management; climate change and water; the water, energy, and food nexus; and water economics. Each of these programmatic areas has associated with a distinct set of knowledge and skills that SIWI is able to bring to bear in dealing with the area. In the field of transboundary water management, for example, the institute develops specific tools and methods to use in dealing with transboundary issues that are based on the best available research and experience on the topic. It also provides mechanisms by which states involved in transboundary issues are able to call upon neutral and trusted third-party observers for assistance in resolving points of dispute. SIWI also offers its services in developing models by which hydroeconomic issues can be studied and resolved. Finally, the institute develops systems that help local water management to extend and improve the resources at their disposal for dealing with a variety of transboundary water management issues.

In addition to the five programmatic areas, SIWI maintains a number of permanent initiatives that focus on specific water management issues: Swedish Water House, The UNDP Water Governance Facility at SIWI, GoAL WaSH (Governance, Advocacy and Leadership in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), MDG-F Knowledge Management, Shared Waters Partnership, EU Water Initiative Africa Working Group, International Centre for Water Cooperation, and Source to Sea. As an example, the Swedish Water House is a mechanism for bringing together Swedish citizens who are interested in and concerned about specific issues of water management, providing them with an opportunity to get together and exchange new and innovative ideas. The house also provides support for Swedish participants involved with international efforts, groups, meetings, and other exchanges on water-related issues. GoAL WaSH is an initiative that targets countries with special deficiencies in access to clean water and/or adequate sanitation facilities. It assists those countries in assessing those facilities and deriving plans for improving access to pure water and adequate sanitation, provides technological and economic assistance in reaching those goals, and helps governments to access the progress they have made in this area. WaSH programs are currently in operation in 11 countries around the world, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, El Salvador, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Liberia, Mongolia, Niger, Paraguay, Tajikistan, and Togo. Source to Sea is a program that brings together experts in freshwater, coastal, and marine sciences to discuss and share their ideas for improving the management and protection of water systems as a whole, including sources, rivers and streams, estuaries, and oceans.

The Stockholm Institute is especially well known to the general public because of its sponsorship of three major water prizes awarded annually, the Stockholm Water Prize, the Stockholm Junior Water Prize, and the Stockholm Industry Water Award, and of the World Water Week held every year in Stockholm to address the current status of the world’s water problems. The Water Prize is awarded to the individual or organization “whose work contributes to the conservation and protection of water resources, and to the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants.” The Junior Prize is awarded to individuals between the age of 15 and 20 who have completed water-related projects on environmental, scientific, social, or technological problems at the local, regional, national, or global level. The Industry Award goes annually to the business or industry whose work during the year has made the greatest contribution to improving the world’s water situation.

SIWI publishes a monthly magazine (available in English), Stockholm Water Front, which provides news updates on water-related topics as well as in-depth articles on specific subjects, such as hydraulic fracturing, the effects of climate change on water resources, and the use of water in mining operations. A number of other publications are also based on or related to World Water Week and the activities that take place in connection with that event. The institute also produces a number of reports on water-related subjects, such as water and food supplies, water in the textile industry, water and energy generation, management of transboundary disputes, and reduction of water loss in agriculture.

Water and Sanitation Program

The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) is a division of the World Bank’s Water Global Practice. The program was established in 1978 in cooperation with the UNDP with the goal of providing poor people with safe, affordable, and sustainable access to water and sanitation. During its first decade of operation, the program focused on the development of technological devices for achieving this objective for delivery to developing nations. During the 1990s, WSP changed its focus to devising ways in which poor communities could develop their own systems for gaining assured access to safe water and sanitary systems, which remains its primary approach today. WSP currently maintains programs in 25 countries for regions: Africa, East Asia and Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean, and South Asia. These programs are carried out in cooperation with academic institutions, civil society organizations, donors, governments, media, private sector, and other interested groups with the aim of bringing about regulatory and structural changes required for the development of safe and efficient water and sanitation systems.

As a way of achieving these objectives, WSP has identified six core topics as guides for its work in client countries:

Scaling Up Rural Sanitation and Hygiene. One aspect of WSP’s work is to find ways of making dependable sanitation systems of proven effectiveness available to small communities that are otherwise less likely to have such systems available to them. In order to do so, WSP programs must also have a strong education component, through which people can learn about the importance of good sanitation and the way to make use of sound sanitation systems.

Creating Sustainable Services through Domestic Private Sector Participation

In addition to seeking support of governmental units, WSP seeks out the cooperation of private domestic companies to scale up the operation of local water and sanitation systems, always making use of the “best practices” available in these areas.

Supporting Poor-Inclusive Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) Sector Reform. WSP sees as one of its fundamental challenges “fixing the institutions that fix the pipes,” which means providing governmental agencies at all levels with information about the best technologies that are available and encouraging those agencies to employ those technologies in support of pro-poor policies.

Targeting the Urban Poor and Improving Services in Small Towns. Although some of the most challenging water and sanitation problems occur in rural areas, towns and cities are not immune from the same problems. WSP also encourages and supports the efforts of governmental units at all levels to improve water and sanitation systems in urban as well as rural areas.

Adapting Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) Delivery to Climate Change Impacts

Developing countries face a “double whammy” of trying to upgrade existing water and sanitation systems while preparing for a host of new problems expected to arise as a result of climate change. WSP aims to provide current knowledge about such problems, along with the best available suggestions for dealing with those problems of its client states.

Delivering Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) Services in Fragile States. Not surprisingly, some nations are at greater risk for water and sanitation deficiencies than are others. The most desperate of these countries, the so-called fragile states, require greater interventions like those provided by WSP programs than do other developing nations.

WSP maintains an excellent collection of reports, articles, country profiles, and other publications on its Web site at http://www.wsp.org/library. The Web page provides an interactive browsing feature that allows one to filter by region, country, theme, and copyright year. Some examples of the materials available are :Investing in the Next Generation: Growing Tall and Smart with Toilets,” “A Randomized Controlled Study of a Large-Scale Rural Sanitation Behavior Change Program in Madhya Pradesh, India,” “A Regional Synthesis of the Service Delivery Assessments for Water Supply and Sanitation in East Asia and the Pacific,” “Africa Regional Highlights,” “Benin—Innovative Public Private Partnerships for Rural Water Services Sustainability—A Case Study,” “Beyond One-Size-Fits-All: Lessons Learned from Eight Water Utility PublicPrivate Partnerships in the Philippines,” “Briefing Note to Support Effective and Sustainable Devolution of Water and Sanitation Services in Kenya,” and “Country Profile: Child Feces Disposal in Afghanistan.”

One of the most popular of the WSP publications is its annual cartoon calendar. The calendar consists of artwork produced by artists around the world with the goal of presenting fundamental information about WASH issues in a relatively simple, humorous fashion. Past issues of the calendar can be found and orders for upcoming calendars can be placed at http://www.wsp.org/about/Cartoon%20Calendars.

Water for People

Water for People (W4P) was founded in 1991 by three men interested in working on projects that would guarantee a safe and continuous supply of pure water for people in developing countries who currently do not have access to such resources. They were Ken Miller, a former president of the AWWA; John B. Mannion, a former executive director of AWWA; and Wayne Weiss, at the time employed by the engineering, consulting, and construction firm of Black & Veatch. The organization’s guiding slogan is Everyone Forever, meaning that it works to develop sustainable water supply systems for every person on the globe, while ensuring that those systems will remain in operation as long as they are needed.

W4P describes its work as representing “a relatively small global footprint” since it is currently in operation in only 30 districts in nine countries around the world, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Malawi, Nicaragua, Peru, Rwanda, and Uganda in programs that reach an estimated 4 million people. It plans to extend its operations, however, with expectations of providing national coverage in four countries by 2018.

W4P points out that it differs from other organizations interested in water issues in a number of ways, such as

• Working toward “full coverage,” which means that the organization’s ultimate goal is to reach every individual, group, and organization within the area it has chosen to work.
• Capacity building, a component of the program that guarantees that not only will water systems be provided for those who need them, but the ability to repair those systems when such repairs are needed will also be supplied.
• Cofinance, an important element based on the principle that communities that receive assistance from W4P will be expected to make a financial contribution toward the organization’s work in those communities.
• Monitoring and evaluation, such that the organization does not walk away from a project once it is completed, but continues to monitor and evaluate the ongoing status of that project.
• Market-based approach, based on the organization’s commitment to sound business principles in carrying out its goals of providing water systems for communities.
• Replication and scale, the principle that systems and programs found to be effective at a local level will then be expanded for use in larger and broader markets.
• Focus on sustainability, the expectation that communities that have benefitted from the work of W4P will not expect to survive on foreign interventions forever, but will eventually take over the task of dealing with their own water issues.
• Transparency, the organization’s commitment to making all of its records available at any time to the general public.

In 2014, W4P invested a total of $16,743,517 in water projects in nine countries, a total that was supplemented by an additional $3,902,052 from governments, local partners, and communities where the new water systems were located. The primary source of revenue for the organization’s work is contributions from corporations, nonprofit organizations, and foundations. Individual donations, bequests, and other contributions supplement these sources. Among the most generous of these contributors in 2014 were Charity: Water, Toms Roasting Company, LDS Charities, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, American Water, Kimberly-Clark, the May and Stanley Smith Charitable Trust, the MWA, University of Strathclyde Research & Innovation, and the Skoll Foundation.

W4P depends heavily on individual volunteers in its work, not only for financial donations, but also for support in a variety of other ways. For example, the organization encourages individuals to design and carry out a variety of fund-raising events, assistance for which is provided by the organization on its Web site (see https://www.crowdrise.com/waterforpeople for further information). W4P also offers impact tours, which allows volunteers to spend about a week in a country with which the organization has a working relationship, providing an opportunity to learn firsthand the type of work it does and to interact with staff and local people engaged in the process of developing water systems. Opportunities are also provided for volunteers to work for an extended period of time on one of the organization’s in-process projects in one of the cooperating countries.

WaterAid

WaterAid is an international nonprofit organization whose purpose it is to ensure that all people in all parts of the world have access to safe water and proper sanitation and hygiene facilities. The organization was created in Great Britain as a charitable trust in July 1981 in response to the United Nations’ declaration of 1981–1991 as the Decade of Drinking Water and Sanitation. Its first two projects were begun almost immediately in Sri Lanka and Zambia, and the severe drought in Africa in 1983 prompted the agency to begin work also in Ethiopia and Tanzania. Two years later, the first water projects were initiated in Ghana, and in 1986, work was extended to Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. As of 2015, WaterAid was operating projects in 26 countries in Central America; Western, Eastern, and Southern Africa; Southeast Asia; and the Pacific Islands. The number of people for whom new water and sanitation facilities were being provided ranged from about 1,000 (sanitation) and 2,000 (water) in Nicaragua to 374,000 (sanitation) and 466,000 (water) in India. Overall, WaterAid’s water projects had reached a total of more than 2 million people worldwide by 2015 and its sanitation projects, more than 3 million people. An additional 4 million people had benefitted from new and improved hygiene programs. The vast majority (more than 70%) of these projects were installed in rural settings, with about 20 percent in urban settings, and the remainder in small towns.

WaterAid’s main offices are in New York City, but it has regional offices also in the cooperating countries of Australia, Canada (formerly WaterCan), Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The organization employs more than 900 people in 37 countries and works with 400 distinct local organizations on its projects. Its current annual budget is about $127 million, of which about 82 percent goes directly to its WASH programs and the remainder to administrative, support, and fund-raising activities. Nearly 80 percent of its income comes from foundations and corporations, with another 13 percent coming from governmental agencies, and the balance from individual donations.

WaterAid uses a four-prong approach in its programs to improve WASH services. The first of those prongs begins with an assessment of a community’s needs in these three areas and the development of a plan to deal with those needs. The plan involves the use of the best technology available for dealing with WASH needs, as well as the development of an educational program to help people become better aware of the importance of pure water and good sanitation and hygiene practices, as well as the ways in which this knowledge can be put to use. The second prong of WaterAid’s approach is empowering individuals in the community to begin taking responsibility for their own WASH systems. The intention is to ensure that the gains made during and as a result of a WaterAid project are not lost when the organization leaves the area, but that local individuals can take over the operation of these systems.

A third element of WaterAid programs involves policy development and advocacy. The organization understands that introducing technological changes in a community and educating local leaders can be only partially successful if governmental agencies at higher levels are not supportive of such changes both from a policy and from a financial standpoint. The organization, therefore, attempts to educate decision-and policy-makers at the state, national, and regional levels to ensure that local communities have the support they need to maintain and improve the WASH systems that WaterAid has helped to develop.

Finally, WaterAid continues to produce a wide variety of publications that can be used to support and encourage the development and implementation of its programs at both the local and national levels. One such publication is the organization’s quarterly newsletter, “Oasis,” available in print format and online at http://www.wateraid.org/us/google-search?query=oasis. Examples of other publications available from the organization are reports on “The Importance of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Lymphatic Filariasis and Leprosy Care and Inclusion”; “Climate Finance and Water Security”; “WASH and Climate Change”; “Financing Sustainable and Resilient Water and Sanitation Infrastructure in African Cities”; and “Compendium of Accessible WASH Technologies.” WaterAid has also produced a number of publications on the issue of sustainability, with particular regard to issues of health, hygiene, sanitation, and water. Its series of “framework” documents in this field are suitable for modification by individual communities in various parts of the world with differing resources and needs. (See http://www.wateraid.org/policy-practice-and-advocacy/sustainability.)

Water.org

Water.org was formed in July 2009 through the merger of WaterPartners and H2O Africa. WaterPartners, in turn, had been established in 1990 by civil engineer Gary White, with the goal of empowering people in developing countries to gain access to safe water and sanitation. H2O Africa had been formed in 2006 by actor Matt Damon, director James Moll, the LivePlanet production company, and the Independent Producers Alliance in conjunction with their production of the documentary film Running the Sahara. The two groups had broadly similar goals and in 2009 joined forces to form Water.org. Today, White serves as CEO of Water.org and as cofounder along with Damon.

Water.org describes itself as being different from other water organizations in that it sees the vast numbers of people without access to clean water and safe sanitation as having the capacity to take care of themselves and their own needs, providing that they have the education they need to understand how to deal with their problems and the access to resources to take advantage of that education. “They are participants [in solving their own water and sanitation problems],” the organization says, “not recipients.” “They know what will work best for them in the long run,” Water.org’s statement of purpose goes on, and the organization is committed to providing them with the resources to make possible the accomplishment of their goals.

The primary mechanism by which Water.org carries out this initiative is a program called WaterCredit, which makes small loans to individual households for making connections to water systems or the installation of toilets. As the loans are repaid, those funds are then reinvested to other households wishing to make similar upgrades. As of late 2015, the organization had made more than 600,000 such loans, with a repayment rate of more than 99 percent. At that point, $12.9 million in capital investments had produced improvements with a commercial value of $128 million, or a return of about 10 times for the investment made by Water.org in water and sanitation projects. In its most recent annual report, the organization noted that it had funded the installation of 135,682 new toilets and 117,884 new water connections, benefitting more than a million people worldwide who had not previously had access to such resources. During the preceding year (2014), Water.org had added 19 new partner organizations around the world and maintained 55 distinct water and sanitation programs worldwide.

The organization’s global headquarters are in Kansas City, with regional offices in Chennai, India; Nairobi, Kenya; Lima, Peru; and Jakarta, Indonesia. It receives about one-fifth of its annual revenue from personal donations, relying on corporations for about an equal income and foundation support for the greatest portion of its budget, about 57 percent of its total income. It spends about three-quarters of its expenses on program activities and the remainder on administrative and support funding. In 2011, Water.org announced the creation of a new program, called the New Ventures Fund, as a way of funding the organization’s efforts to design, develop, test, and implement new technologies that can be used in improving the accessibility of individuals and communities to clean water and safe sanitation systems.

Dating back to 2008, Water.org and its predecessor organizations have sought out the assistance of corporations in helping to achieve their objectives. The organization currently has “strategic alliances” with the Pepsico Foundation, Caterpillar Corporation, IKEA Foundation, Cartier Charitable Foundation, Swiss Re Foundation, Stella Artois company, Helmsley Charitable Trust, Bank of America, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Zynga.org, Tarbaca Indigo Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and Jeep.

World Health Organization

Efforts to establish regional and international health organizations to deal with health and medical problems that transcend national borders extend to the early decades of the 20th century. The first of those organizations was the Office International d’Hygiène Publique (International Office of International Hygiene), created by the League of Nations in 1920. When the United Nations was formed after the end of World War II in 1946, some interest was expressed in creating a similar office in the new organization. Delegates from China and Brazil, in particular, Chinese delegate Dr. Szeming Sze, argued for the immediate formation of such an organization. Delegates unanimously approved Sze’s suggestion, and a committee was created to write a constitution for the organization. The organization, the WHO, officially came into being on April 7, 1948, when its constitution was ratified by the 28th member state. As such, WHO became the first specialized agency within the United Nations. (The organization’s founding date of April 7 is now celebrated annually as World Health Day.)

WHO is currently a member of the United Nations Development Group (UNDG), a collection of about two dozen separate agencies created in 1997 to bring some order to a disparate variety of organizations developed within the United Nations over the preceding three decades. Other members of UNDG include the Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund, World Food Programme, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and the United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States.

Ultimate decision-making authority for WHO resides in the World Health Assembly, whose members are appointed by the 194 member states, which meets annually in May. The assembly debates and decides on general matters of policy and finance and elects 34 members to the organization’s Executive Board for terms of three years each. Members of the board are expected to be especially qualified in the field of the health sciences. The primary function of the Executive Board is to carry out the general policy decisions made by the assembly. Day-to-day operation of the organization is carried out under the direction of the director-general who, as of late 2015, was Margaret Chan, formerly director of health in Hong Kong. Chan’s term runs until June 2017. More than 8,500 specialists in the health sciences work for WHO in a variety of settings in 147 countries that are organized into six regional offices, Africa, the Americas, Eastern Mediterranean, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Western Pacific.

WHO’s work is organized into more than 200 programs focusing on specific health issues, such as aging and life course, buruli ulcer, communicable diseases, drug resistance, food safety, health and human rights, injection safety, oral health, schistosomiasis, substance abuse, yaws, and zoonoses and veterinary public health. Its primary WASH-related programs are household water treatment and safe storage, water sanitation and health (WSH), and the WSPortal, Health through Water. The last of these programs is a collaborative effort of WHO with nine national and regional agencies, such as Health Canada, the New Zealand Ministry of Health, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, designed to outline methods for the development of safe water treatment, storage, and use programs for a variety of local settings. WSH is a broad-ranging program developed to carry out the agency’s WASH and NTD Global Strategy for 2015–2020. It deals with a host of WASH-related issues, such as drinking water quality; bathing water issues; water-related diseases; wastewater use; health care waste; water, health, and economics; and household water treatment (for further information, see http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/en/).

One of WHO’s most important benefits is the very large data bank that it maintains, along with a huge library of reports and other publications. The agency’s online data repository, for example, contains a number of user-friendly interactive sites on themes such as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), mortality and global health estimates, noncommunicable diseases, substance use and mental health, health systems, public health and environment, infectious diseases, injuries and violence, urban health, and general world health statistics. Each of these general categories is further subdivided into more specific topics, such as (for public health and environment) household air pollution; ambient air pollution; joint effects of air pollution; electromagnetic fields; environmental health relating to children; climate change; lead; occupational risk factors; secondhand smoke; ultraviolet radiation; and water, sanitation, and hygiene. The organization’s online IRIS (Institutional Repository for Information Sharing) resource also lists nearly 7,000 publications of all kinds on topics ranging from 1-naphthylamine and 1-propanol to zinc and zoonoses, searchable by author, title, subject, community, issue date, and other criteria. More than 2,000 publications are available in the database, for example, on water-related topics, more than 1,500 on topics related to sanitation, and about 60 additional topics on the subject of hygiene. The WHO media center is also a very rich source of news on a host of health-related issues in the form of news reports, events listings and descriptions, fact sheets, multimedia materials, commentaries, feature articles, and other publications and resources.

World Water Council

As far back as the late 1970s, water experts worldwide had been bemoaning the absence of a single international body with responsibility for global water issues. Traditionally, such issues had been the purview of regional, national, state, and local authorities, which seldom dealt with more widespread problems other than those within their boundaries. The 1977 United Nations Conference on Water, held at Mar de Plata, Argentina, was the first attempt to develop an international approach to the world’s water problems. But it was still nearly two decades before an actual organization for the governance of water resources worldwide was established. The organization, the WWC, was first proposed at a special session of the International Water Resources Association’s Eighth World Water Congress, held in Cairo, in November 1994. Out of that discussion arose the formation of the WWC in March and September 1995. The purpose of the organization is “to promote awareness, build political commitment and trigger action on critical water issues at all levels.”

The WWC currently consists of nearly 300 members with diverse functions, except for a common interest in water issues, such as Absheron Water Canal Department (Azerbaijan), Aguas Andinas (Chile), American Society of Civil Engineers—Environmental & Water Resources Institute, Andong City Government (Republic of Korea), Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Department of Water Affairs and Forestry—South Africa, Global Institute for Water Environment and Health (Switzerland), Celik Construction Industry and Trade Company, Inc. (Turkey), Scientific Information Center of Interstate Commission for Water Coordination in Central Asia, Water Center for Latin America and the Caribbean (Mexico), Women for Water Partnership International, and World Wildlife Fund—US.

The ultimate authority of the WWC resides in the General Assembly, which includes all members of the organization. The General Assembly meets once every three years and in special session if and when needed. The General Assembly elects and appoints up to 35 members of the Board of Governors, who, in turn, select the council’s major officers, including the president, vice president, and treasurer. As of late 2015, the president of WWC is Benedito Braga, secretary for sanitation and water resources for the state of São Paulo and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Escola Politecnica of University of São Paulo, Brazil.

One of the council’s major recurring activities is the World Water Forum, held every three years in a different location. The most recent session was held from April 12 to 17, 2015, at the DaeguGyeongbuk Free Economic Zone, in South Korea. The conference drew more than 40,000 participants from 168 nations meeting for more than 400 events and sessions. A total of 188 memorandums of understanding and 50 bilateral and multilateral agreements were also signed during the conference. In addition to the World Water Forum, WWC sponsors, cosponsors, or participates in a number of other international, regional, and national meetings, such as (in 2015) International Congress & Exhibition of the African Water Association, Financial Times Water Summit, International River Symposium, Renewable Energy World Asia, and Catalyst California: It’s a Dry, Dry, Dry, Dry World.

WWC publishes a professional journal, Water Policy Journal, six times a year that deals with all aspects of water management, such as ecosystems, engineering, management and restoration; engineering and design; river basin and watershed management; multiple uses of water; pollution monitoring and control; management, use, and sharing of transboundary waters, treaties, and allocation agreements; flood control and disaster management; groundwater remediation and conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water; and public participation, consensus building, and confidence building. The organization provides access to an excellent collection of its publications on its Web site at http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/library/official-documents/. These publications include official documents, activity reports, news of council activities, annual and special reports, thematic reports (such as water and green growth), and forum documents produced at each triennial meeting.

Many farmers rely on automatic watering systems for the irrigation of their crops. These systems, however, consume enormous quantities of fresh water on an ongoing basis. (OIgor Stevanovic/Dreamstime.com)