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Space-Age Drinking Water System Tested

The system, originally designed for NASA, may provide a short-term solution to provide residents with clean drinking water.

U.S. soldiers assigned to the 401st Civil Affairs Battalion in Dahuk, Iraq, have found an alternative way for residents to drink clean water in the village of Bendaway.
A creek running through a small village in northern Iraq is the only natural source of drinking water for the residents who live there.

"We are surrounded by agriculture here," said John Anderson, who works for a nongovernment organization Concern for Kids.

"There are chemicals that run into it, pesticides, fertilizers; everything is in this water."

"This village lost 10 children in June 2003, from drinking sewer water out of the stream, because there was no other water," Anderson said.

The nongovernment organization, in conjunction with the 401st Civil Affairs Battalion, is testing a space-age portable water filtering and purification system that was originally designed for NASA, and is modeled after the space shuttle water recycling system.

"We use the same technology, with a little different configuration," Anderson said.

U.S. Army Capt. Steven Hayden, of the 401st Civil Affairs Battalion, said that the portable water system being tested costs just under $10,000 and believes it can be the short-term solution for the water problem.

"There are about 300 villages in northern Iraq that don't have potable drinking water," Hayden said.

"If you were able to put storage tanks in these villages, next to a creek," Hayden said. "Someone could come out once a week and fill the tanks up; it would have a phenomenal impact.

Source: U.S. Department of Defense