The "water boat" in Cambodia, now named the Dolphin, is in operation, and the water purification equipment is being used to provide safe water in the villages. With the dry season, we are learning daily how to best use the system, its limitations, what the on-going needs are, and to look ahead to complementing this system.
Target date for installing the system was January 7-10, 2010. Our installation team spent that week in Cambodia teaching the local team how to install, set up and operate the system. Two weeks later the system was delivered and the work began. By mid-February it was up and running, and the results were everything we hoped for -- pure, clean, safe drinking water.
It took a lot of planning and creative engineering to adapt the unit to the boat platform, but once in place it worked excellently. The water is pumped directly from the lake into and through the purification unit, where it is filtered and treated and the final product tested for purity. Pumping from a lower main tank into the upper distribution tank provides dwell time for the chlorination to be effective. The water is then gravity-fed to bottles that can be taken back to individual homes.
The unit is powered by a 480-watt solar array set atop the boat, making the unit fully mobile and able to provide water in remote villages accessible only by boat. This also makes a much greener footprint as it eliminates the use of diesel fuel to power the pumps and generates no additional noise pollution on the lake.
This project was a truly cooperative endeavor. Without the technical expertise and assistance of Water Missions International (WMI), local volunteers (Wayne Johnson, Mike Phipps and Rick Holliman) who did the planning and instruction, and the wonderful donors who provided the funding, this would not have happened.
