Finding Clean Water For Earthquake Victims In A Newtown Basement

By Kaaren Valenta

The poster on the door of the former Newtown Manufacturing Company identifies its new tenant: the World Help Foundation. In the basement of the building a handful of volunteers work diligently, assembling water purification units for shipment to survivors of the recent earthquake in India.

What began as one man’s vision has evolved into a Newtown-based charitable foundation that has a goal of providing safe drinking water to underdeveloped countries and disaster areas around the world. Harvey Sellner, the founder and president of WHF, has a simple philosophy: “Everyone is entitled to safe drinking water.”

Water purification units have been installed at locations in Armenia, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Somalia, and Venezuela. Another 120 are being readied for shipment to India, where a massive earthquake several weeks ago killed nearly 100,000 persons and displaced many more.

“Things are so bad there that the personnel from the relief organizations are living in tents with the victims and are cut off from communications with their headquarters,” said Joanne Cooley, WHF director of communications.

Mrs Cooley said the water purification units will be shipped to India by AmeriCares, the humanitarian relief organization based in New Canaan.

The genesis of WHF came more than a decade ago when Mr Sellner, an aerospace engineer, was still working for Perkin Elmer. He became involved in setting up a small company in Woodbury that produced water purification systems for use in the United States and other developed countries.

“The technology is simple but wonderful – carbon filters and ultraviolet lights. It kills bacteria and keeps the systems sterile, but I soon realized that it was being marketed in the wrong place,” Mr Sellner said. “I saw that about 10 years ago when Jerry Lowney, a dentist, went to Jeremy, Haiti, to help the natives there. We set up a water purification system at a clinic there that is still in use.”

Mr Sellner belongs to the Rotary Club of Newtown, a community fellowship group composed of business and professional men and women dedicated to local, regional, and international service. Working with the Rotary, Mr Sellner shipped dozens of water purification units to Ghana, along with donated computers, and 20 cases of books donated by the Friends of the Booth Library after their annual book sale.

When mudslides of epic proportion buried towns and villages in Venezuela last year, WHF joined with the Rotary and AmeriCares to bring help to the hundreds of thousands of people who were without shelter and safe drinking water. In mid-January, an earthquake and major aftershock a week later brought WHF volunteers, who eventually installed 50 water purification units throughout the devastated areas.

“When relief organizations eventually leave disaster areas, these people are still without homes,” Mrs Cooley pointed out. “But access to safe drinking water will prevent a lot of water-borne disease and death.”

As many as 1.2 billion people worldwide live in areas that do not have safe drinking water, and many are affected by diarrhea, roundworm, or schistosomiasis. An estimated 25 million die every year from diseases contracted from contaminated water.

“Adults who survive have built up some immunity, but waterborne diseases are the principle cause of death for children in many underdeveloped countries,” Mrs Cooley said.

“The problem is huge,” Mr Sellner said. “Diseases like AIDS draw attention but there is no champion for safe water in the world, even though it is the world’s biggest problem.”

Mr Sellner said his foundation has three objectives: to research methods of bringing safe water to developing nations; to use those countries as a way of collecting information that can be used to help other people; and to provide disaster relief.

“Ghana was chosen as a testing ground for the concepts we are trying to perfect because just about every waterborne disease can be found in the surrounding area,” he said. “We want to be like the Consumers Union for developing countries by independently evaluating water purification systems.”

Mr Sellner said that two years ago the World Bank installed a huge water tower in Ghana with the promise by the local government that electricity would be provided. “The government is now broke and there is no confidence that electricity will ever happen,” Mr Sellner said. “We provided a diesel generator that had been meant only as a backup system. Now a whole town has safe water to drink, including a clinic that has about a thousand births a year.”

WHF also provided water to a convent and to a school in Ghana that has more than 1,000 students. Mr Sellner wants to assist a public girls’ boarding school whose only available source of water is a polluted stream nearby. “Fathers have to bring water to the school for their daughters,” he explained.

The company in Woodbury that produced the water purification units eventually became part of the Electrolux Corporation. When Electrolux later decided to get out of the water purification business, it donated 1,000 units to WHF. Because the units were made for use in the United States, the transformers run on alternating current (AC). To be used in underdeveloped countries and at disaster sites, the units usually have to be adapted for direct current (DC). That’s where the local Newtown Rotarians and other friends have pitched in.

One day last week Fred Parrella, Skip Nelson, Stretch Forbell, and Joe Borst were in the basement of the former Newtown Manufacturing building, working in assembly line fashion, disassembling the units and adapting them for DC.  Four of the purifiers are placed in a large Rubbermaid-type picnic basket and fitted with a hose that draws in polluted water, and four spigots to supply the potable water.

“Each purifier can supply one to two gallons of safe drinking water per minute – about 1,500 gallons a day,” Mr Sellner said. “Three of these picnic baskets placed 100 feet apart can serve 5,000 to 10,000 people. Thirty of them will be set up at 10 sites in India.”

The need for the water purification units is great, and Harvey Sellner realized that once the 1,000 donated units are distributed, WHF would be out of resources. So he began to build the foundation by appealing for funds from the public and from corporations and foundations.

He brought in Joanne Cooley, a marketing specialist, and a grant writer who will apply for federal, corporate, and charitable funds.  All of this was done from a makeshift office in Mr Sellner’s Newtown home until a few months ago when it moved into the former Newtown Manufacturing plant owned by fellow Rotarian Bill Watts. The building had been empty since last summer when the screw machine parts manufacturer was purchased by the Iseli Company and moved to Plymouth, Connecticut.

“The Rotary has been a source of support for us,” Mr Sellner said. “We already got a $15,000 matching grant and are applying for a grant from Rotary International for $300,000.”

WHF also hopes to link up with Hope Worldwide, a Pennsylvania-based foundation that sets up medical clinics in underdeveloped countries around the world.

“They have programs in place,” Mrs Cooley explained. “As soon as the push to supply India with the units is over, we will be contacting Hope Worldwide to get our units to every one of their sites.”

Originally named World Help Through Technology Foundation, the name of the Public 501(c3) charity was shortened recently to WHF. A nonprofit organization, it operates solely on donations. The foundation has established an adopt-a-clinic program ($500 each); an adopt-a-school program ($1,000) each; and an adopt-a-village program ($1,500) to serve 1,000 people or more year-round. But contributions of all sizes are needed and may be sent to the World Help Foundation, PO Box 500, Newtown, CT 06470. For additional information, call 800/814-2500.