By Ryan Wichelns

 

Deficiency in the water supply are not all that apparent to most Americans. We

drink as much as we please, wash our cars, take long hot showers and fill

massive pools with it, only so we can contaminate it with chemicals and swim

in it. Water is abundant. But at the same time, according to the University of

Rhode Island,  884 million people around the world lack access to clean water

and, every year, 2 million people die from waterborne diseases. Instead of

seeing abundance, University of Rhode Island professor Vinka Craver sees

want. 

 

This past summer, Craver took a group of URI students to Guatemala, where

she has been working for, what is now, seven years. Their goal was to complete

another step in the project Craver has been heading; engineering a simple water

treatment plant for the community and teaching the locals how to replicate it.

Completion would mean a self-sustaining system for getting clean drinking water

in an area that has been hard hit by diseases from contamination. 

 

For her students, “the bubble broke,” said Craver, when they realized the realities of a community not having good drinking water, a concept that was unimaginable to many of them as college students in modern America. 

 

The differences between America and underdeveloped regions like Guatemala can cause a dramatic change in how water is cleaned, according to Craver. She explains the two primary types of systems for purifying water as being either centralized, like our municipal water supplies, or point-of-use, like the individual clay pot filters Craver was helping develop for small groups in Guatemala, or even like the individual faucet water filters that many people have in their homes, today. 

 

The major difference is a shift in responsibility from the government or another civil institution to the individual users. Point-of-use filtration may not be as consistent, Craver said, but in locations without a strong governing body or in area that are too far from a potential larger supply, POU water filtration is the best option. 

 

Craver, an assistant professor of environmental and civil engineering at URI, became interested in water supply and treatment by combining the social passions she developed in college with engineering, which on its own, she described as confining. “It opened up a whole field of research for me,” she said, describing her combination.

 

Craver describes her mission in Guatemala as being an exercise in trial an error. After developing a system for cleaning water in a region with no local engineers, the project still wont be finished, she said, until the local people can replicate the system, making it last. 

 

Craver is taking it “step by step,” she said, not sure how much longer it will take and how many more times she will return to Guatemala, but Professor Craver is adamant that she will finish. “Solving problems is more complicated than you think,” she said, but in a field that she believes to be as important as it is, she knows she will get it done.