In American culture, we often take for granted how vital water is. Water is the most fundamental resource for sustaining life. Although not ideal, you could live for up to three weeks without food. However, you can only live for three days without water. Even though water is absolutely essential for life, more than 748 million people worldwide are without access to clean, safe drinking water.
Hydromissions provides safe water using methods appropriate to each individual community. In most cases, we train volunteers from the community on how to drill shallow borehole wells and build hand-pumps using locally available material.
Steve and Jennifer Lorch, the founders of Hydromissions, developed the Explorer Hand Drilling System (EXP-50). The EXP-50 is a durable manual drill for shallow boreholes that can be repaired or replaced by using parts that are accessible in most developing countries. The entire drill can be backpacked to just about any location without having to worry about vehicle accessibility.
In areas where the EXP-50 drill is unable to reach water, Hydromissions can construct rainwater catchment systems or build spring water catchment and piping systems.
The most important part of our designs is that they are sustainable. The majority of our work is in areas without electricity, so our water solutions are manual and require only appropriate technologies based on the conditions of the community.