2007 Ground Water Summit

Wednesday, May 2, 2007 : 2:20 p.m.

Business Model for Implementing Sustainable Water Solutions in Developing Areas

Laura R. Brunson, BBA, Thabani Milo, BSE, [HONS] and David A. Sabatini, Ph.D., University of Oklahoma

The inaccessibility of safe drinking water is a global challenge.  The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately 1.1 billion people are currently without access to potable water and that resolving this challenge can yield economic benefits of up to $12 billion.  The United Nation's Millennium Development Goal: ensuring sustainable development aims to “Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.”  Meeting this objective requires identifying solutions to fluoride and arsenic tainted water, which threaten drinking water sources in many emerging regions.

 

Sustainable Development is “the framework for our efforts to achieve a higher quality of life for all people,” in which “economic development, social development and environmental protection are interdependent and mutually reinforcing components” as defined by the 1995 World Summit on Sustainable Development.  This expanded in the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, which identified the “three overarching objectives of sustainable development to be (1) eradicating poverty, (2) protecting natural resources, and (3) changing unsustainable production and consumption patterns.”

 

Many technologies have been researched and used with varying levels of success to remove harmful levels of arsenic and fluoride from drinking water sources.  A number of these are low-cost treatment solutions which have the potential to be sustainable for developing economies by using local resources such as bone char in the treatment method.  This paper presents a comprehensive business model for the implementation of these low-cost technologies in developing areas.  The business model not only improves access to potable water, but also offers the potential to increase the economic viability of the area.  The model develops a plan for citizens of a community to implement and sustain water purification technology in their area in a way that will promote the ideals of sustainable development. 

 

Laura R. Brunson, BBA, University of Oklahoma Laura Brunson is a GAANN graduate fellow at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. Brunson received a Bachelor of Business in 2002 from the University of Oklahoma. Her experience includes corporate and nonprofit management, sales and marketing positions as well as co-founding Sustainable OKC, a nonprofit organization in Oklahoma City. Her research focuses on the development of sustainable methods for removing arsenic and fluoride from water sources to increase access to potable water in developing areas both locally and globally. She is currently working on her MS under Dr. Sabatini in the Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science.

Thabani Milo, BSE, [HONS], University of Oklahoma Thabani Mlilo is a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. Mlilo has worked in the Oil and Gas industry as part of the Environmental toxicology and Product Safety and Industrial Ecology and Risk Studies groups in the Research and Development division of SASOL, based in South Africa. He has experience in toxicity testing, surface and ground water quality monitoring, ecological and environmental risk assessments, effluent treatment, and public participation forums. He is currently working on his MS under Dr. Sabatini in the Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science at the University of Oklahoma.

David A. Sabatini, Ph.D., University of Oklahoma Dr. Sabatini is David Ross Boyd Professor and Sun Oil Company Chair of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science at the University of Oklahoma, where he has been on the faculty since 1989. His research interests include development of water treatment processes, ground water remediation technologies and environmentally friendly chemical processes and products. He is Director of the OU WaTER (Water Technologies for Emerging Regions) Center. He received his BSCE from the University of Illinois – Urbana, his MSCE from Memphis State University, and his PhD from Iowa State University.


The 2007 Ground Water Summit