Clean Drinking Water

Many communities in India, especially in rural areas, do not have access to clean drinking water. PPI has undertaken several different initiatives to provide clean drinking water to marginalized populations.

The majority of PPI’s drinking water projects use bio-sand filters, based on a simple, affordable, environmentally friendly technology that is highly effective in removing pathogens. The technology behind bio-sand filters was developed by David Manz at the University of Calgary. Since 2008, when PPI partnered with Friendly Water for the World, in Olympia, WA to make bio-sand filters (BSF) available to villagers in Tamil Nadu, PPI has undertaken BSF projects with seven NGOs in six states, including Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. Bio-sand filters are manufactured locally and assembled on location and villagers are trained in the use and maintenance of the filters. There is no recurring cost and a filter lasts the lifetime of the outer concrete container.

PPI has also funded a few borewell projects where the communities had no other source of drinking water.

In 2020, PPI partnered with an NGO in Uttar Pradesh to support a pilot project to remove fluoride from drinking water. The project is in a region with fluoride levels significantly above the World Health Organization’s accepted limit for drinking water and many villagers are affected with dental and skeletal fluorosis.