Sustainable Treatment of Contaminated Groundwater in Cambodia: Turning a Crisis into an Economic Enterprise

The project focuses on arsenic removal in ground-sourced drinking water in Cambodia. Many people living in the Mekong river floodplains in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos use water contaminated with arsenic at concentrations typically over 20 times the safe limit prescribed by the World Health Organization. The project involves an arsenic groundwater removal system using locally available chemical compounds and reusable sand filters. Ground water is pumped into an overhead tank, chemically stabilised, filtered using reusable arsenic-selective adsorbents, and converted into stable sludge/solids for safe long-term storage. Twelve community-level arsenic removal units are to be installed in remote villages and schools in Cambodia.

The project, using locally available raw materials, will complement traditional methods of water collection and costs will be shared by users. Environmental sustainability is addressed through the careful containment and storage of the arsenic removed from the contaminated water to ensure it does not leach into the environment. Socio-economic sustainability will be addressed through the formation and functioning of community water councils to ensure efficient operation and upkeep of the units. The Tagore-SenGupta Foundation, based in Pennsylvania, will be partnering with Cambodian NGO, This Life Cambodia, and Lehigh University.

Reed Elsevier Environmental Challenge second place winner, $25,000
Jenna Forsyth

Improving access to safe water and empowering students and communities through a scalable school-based water treatment and education programme in Kenya

The project developed by Jenna Forsyth, a student at the University of Washington, aims to develop a scalable school water treatment and education programme in the Nyanza province of western Kenya. The Smart Electrochlorinator 200, developed with Cascade Designs and Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, utilises locally available salt and battery or solar power to generate enough chlorine-based disinfectant solution per six minute cycle to treat 200 litres of water. The pilot, concentrating on three schools initially, will involve creation of school water clubs to increase knowledge of basic water, sanitation, and hygiene, among students, teachers, and parents.

The project will engage a range of stakeholders including community health workers, village leaders, and officials from the Kenyan Ministries of Education, Water, and Public Health. A project leader from each school will be trained to conduct regular sampling to ensure the water meets WHO standards for water quality.

The other shortlisted projects were:

“Aakash Ganga”: A community rooftop rainwater harvesting system in India
Candidate: Pratibha Shenoy/Sustainable Innovations Inc.

Water supply in India is dependent on the monsoon which brings a rainy season in the summer accounting for 80% of yearly rainfall. Delayed onset of the monsoon can have catastrophic consequences for the domestic water supply and larger economy. This project to collect and store rooftop rainwater, aims to provide equitable distribution of drinking water, at a village level, all year round.

The rooftop collection system has been piloted successfully in six villages in Rajasthan. The collected rainwater is shared between a network of local reservoirs, with capacity to supply domestic water to each household for a year.

If successful, prize money will contribute to the extension of the project, including construction of a 10,000 m2 rainwater harvesting park that will yield an estimated 40 liters of water per capita per day. Among other contributions, local government would lease land for free to establish the park. Total project cost is estimated at $85,000 for one village.

A solar energy-based water purification system for Mozambique
Candidate: Boris Atanassov/Greenlight

Following the end of a 30 year civil war in 1995, Mozambique is still recovering from the destruction of its infrastructure, particularly in rural districts. As few as 32% of the population have access to adequate sanitation and just 43% to clean water, and the practice of boiling water for purification using inefficient biomass fuel systems brings further health impacts and contributes to deforestation and CO2 emissions.

This project would utilise a water purification system, developed by Solvatten in Sweden, to purify water through solar energy. Each 10-liter unit can purify water in as little as two hours, generating 10-30 litres of safe drinking water per day. Two regions, one urban and one rural, suffering from severe water-quality problems would be chosen in the pilot which aims to reach 500 communities. The total cost of the project is estimated at $49,900.