Ozone treats water in third world countries

Church volunteers install water systems in other countries

Posted: Saturday, December 27, 2014 8:15 am

Kelly Goad of Bowling Green traveled to third-world countries during his military service, but he never experienced anything like his recent mission trips installing clean water systems in rural Central America.

“We’ve been in villages where one in four babies die because of the water,” Goad said. “When you know you can do something to keep those children healthy enough and get out of poverty … it’s a thing that God calls us to do.”

In the past four years, Goad has volunteered on at least half a dozen trips with Living Waters for the World, a mission program that installs simple water purification systems in villages with contaminated water sources.

“It is an eye-opening experience that everybody should experience,” Goad said.

The program is run by the Synod of Living Waters, the regional governing body of Presbyterian churches in a four-state area, including Kentucky. The synod was named for the abundant water resources in the region.

The Presbyterian Church in Bowling Green, of which Goad is a member, has helped with the installation of more than a dozen water purification systems through Living Waters for the World.

Goad and several other volunteers from the church recently got back from the village of Armenia in western Belize, where they surveyed a potential new site for a water system.

“We test the water to see what they’re drinking and we always find that it’s just not acceptable at all,” Goad said. “Contaminated water is the No. 1 killer of children around the world.”

The villagers usually don’t know their water source is polluted, so residents get sick without realizing the cause, said Tom Moody, who coordinates the Living Waters projects at the Presbyterian Church in Bowling Green.

“The whole health of the community can be vastly improved with the water purification system,” he said.

Goad and the other volunteers will return to Belize in 2015 to install the purification system of pumps and filters.

“We filter with UV light or ozone,” Goad said. Local residents “think of chlorine as bleach and they will not drink it.”

In addition to installing the system, the volunteers train villagers to operate and maintain it so they’ll have access to clean, affordable water for generations, he said.

“We teach them a business plan,” he said.

Since the program started in the early 1990s, more than 600 purification units have been installed in 18 countries, according to John Gramling, a member of the Presbyterian Church in Bowling Green who served on the committee that started the Living Waters program more than 20 years ago using a $3,000 grant.

Rather than focusing on larger cities in the developing world, as many organizations do, “our concept was looking at small villages and having a direct interest in their own backyard,” Gramling said.

“I never dreamed that it would grow so big,” he said. “I’m still a little overwhelmed.”

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