Rainwater for Humanity, a collaboration between Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students, has developed a system for providing clean, drinkable water to people living in Kerala, India — but the project has met some cultural challenges.
The residents of Achinakom, a village in the state of Kerala, do not have access to affordable drinking water. Much of the local groundwater is contaminated, leading to disease and increased medical costs, according to the group's website. Clean water is available from vendors, but at high prices.
Brown and RISD students have designed a solution to this problem — tanks that catch, filter and store rainwater during the monsoon. The water collection frees families from the financial burden of buying water and paying for health care costs. The first tank was built in 2009, according to the group's website.
The group received about $40,000 in grants and has spent approximately half of the funds, said Senior Research Engineer and Senior Lecturer in Engineering Christopher Bull '79 MS'86 PhD'06, who advises the Rainwater for Humanity team.
Bull said the tanks are generally connected to the rainwater gutters on existing dwellings. When it rains, runoff from the first five minutes is discarded and the rest of the water is stored. The system is entirely human-powered and gravity-fed, requiring no electricity.
There are currently two prototype tanks functioning in Achinakom, Bull said.
The team also designed a payback system to make the tanks economically sustainable. Several families purchase a communal tank and pay for it over the course of a few years. Villagers pay less per month than they spend on water vendors and medical fees for water-borne diseases.
The group members wanted the project to be economically sustainable and use locally available materials, said Christina Tang '09, one of the project's original members. The group has also partnered with a local university and community members.
Though the team has successfully come up with a solution for providing affordable, clean water, the project is facing cultural challenges. The tanks currently functioning in Achinakom were built as prototypes, at no expense to the residents, Tang said. Some now consider it unfair that the tanks were provided free to those families, while others will be expected to pay back the cost. This attitude stems from Kerala's communist political ideology, which has led residents to expect free services, she added.
Tang added that persuading villagers to purchase tanks is the "major challenge" facing the project. In addition, politicians are often unwilling to support grassroots projects, preferring larger projects that gain media coverage.
Current group member Eli Crumrine '11 said that many of the villagers are employed unreliably as day laborers or in seasonal agricultural jobs and are therefore unwilling to commit to paying off debt. But he said he is optimistic about the possibilities for success and expansion in the future.
"I definitely feel good about what we've learned, what our partners have learned and about the effect that we've had," Crumrine said.
