#World WaterDay: 24 AquaTowers to be deployed in 24 communities in 24 hours

Today being World Water Day, Planet Water Foundation is set to deploy 24 of its green technology known as AquaTowers under an initiative dubbed “Project 24” to 24 communities across five countries in just 24 hours.

Project deployments began at midnight U.S Eastern Daylight Time with teams constructing one AquaTower sequentially every hour, on the hour, in communities across Cambodia, Colombia, India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The teams have successfully set up nine AquaTowers and one can follow their live updates on these twitter handles @PlanetWaterLive, @wattsbrand, #Project24 with 15 hours to go and have cooperated with Arizona State University and Arizona PBS to feature Project 24 as a one hour special at 9 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, streamed live on Planet Water’s website at www.planet-water.org.

Each AquaTower produces up to 10,000 liters of clean, safe drinking water every day – enough to support the needs of 1,000 people, or the size of a typical rural village in impoverished communities. Superior to well water, AquaTowers remove bacteria, protozoa, viruses, pathogens and other contaminants that make people sick to produce safe drinking water that meets World Health Organization standards. The drinking water is accessed through nine faucets positioned around the tower, which are also used for hand washing.

“Having access to clean water is often times something we take for granted in the U.S.,” said Mark Steele, Founder and CEO of Planet Water Foundation. “Installation of these AquaTowers solves many problems that face these communities in all parts of the world. Providing clean water allows young girls the opportunity to go to school when they would often spend their entire day gathering water for their families. We can help reduce the estimated yearly 500,000 dehydration deaths caused by diarrhea from contaminated water.”

Each Project 24 AquaTower project costs $15,000 to deploy, which also includes five years of post-project sustainability support, water quality monitoring, and implementation of the water-health and hygiene education program. AquaTower projects are typically sponsored by companies that are committed to corporate and social responsibility around water and hygiene education initiatives, such as Xylem, Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Capital One.