Town Groups Bring Clean Water For Disaster Relief
Town Groups Bring Clean Water
For Disaster Relief
By Nancy K. Crevier
Through efforts of the Newtown Rotary Club, the Newtown Chamber of Commerce, members of Rotary District 7980, the PTA, Newtown schoolsâ Interact Clubs and many Newtown individuals, the World Help Foundation (WHF) has raised enough funds to complete assembly and prepare to ship ten complete disaster relief systems to provide pure water to Aceh, Indonesia, which was at the epicenter of last Decemberâs devastating tsunami. The water purification equipment is valued at $80,000.
World Help Foundation is a public charity dedicated to providing clean drinking water to places afflicted by disaster and to developing countries around the world. Harvey Sellner, Ed Osterman, Skip Roberts, and Fred Parrella, all Newtown Rotarians, founded World Help Foundation in 1991 as a means to give the basic right of safe water to all the people of the world. Impure drinking water contributes to disease in many underdeveloped countries and countries afflicted by natural disasters.
The systems, each made up of three units, were assembled in the garage of WHF volunteer Ken Mackenzie of Newtown and stored at the Newtown Public Works Department, thanks to the generosity of the Town of Newtown. âWe were happy to help out,â said First Selectman Herb Rosenthal. âItâs a worthy cause and a big benefit to the tsunami victims.â
Through a system of filters and ultraviolet light, the water-purifying units manufactured by a Newtown business, Water For Life, allows water that would be otherwise unusable to be inexpensively purified. Twelve people will be able to get clean water simultaneously from each of the ten sites when they are installed, as each unit is capable of serving four people.
Mariano Brothers, Inc of Bethel donated trucking to move the systems from the Newtown Public Works to its warehouse on Paul Street in Bethel for preparation for shipping. The systems are presently housed there and will be loaded into overseas containers, also donated by Mariano Brothers, for shipping next week.