Local experts from the Philadelphia Water Department, the University of Pennsylvania, Aqua America, Pennoni Associates and other organizations are uniting to help the United Nations bring clean water and sanitation to all people around the world.

The Philadelphia Global Water Initiative held its first conference on November 13 on the Penn campus. Over 130 people attended, including panelists from the United Nations and the U.S. State Department. Michaela Oldfield of Water Advocates, a global water advocacy group, based in Washington, D.C., remarked that "Philadelphia is the first U.S. city to take on UN MDG global water and sanitation challenges."

During the meeting, the FWWIC showed a short video of the late Sen. Paul Simon discussing his book, Tapped Out: The Coming World Crisis in Water and What We Can Do About It, taped at a PWD conference in November 2000. Participants adjourned that afternoon for a reception and tour at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center.

Echoing Sen. Simon's message, PWD's Ed Grusheski asked, "Did you know that every 20 seconds, someone, usually a child, dies from a water-related problem? We have the means to help. Philadelphia is rich in talent and ideas. Through the Philadelphia Global Water Initiative we can share proven technologies from our engineering firms, universities, utilities and hospitals with people in countries that lack such resources."

The need for clean water is critical and immediate:

• Nearly half of the world's people do not have access to the clean water and sanitation services available 2000 years ago to the citizens of ancient Rome
• More than a billion people lack access to drinking water, and half of them have never seen a toilet.
• In the past decade more children have died from diarrhea than were killed in all the armed conflicts since World War II.
• Water is not spread evenly across the globe. Nearly 20% of the world's population lives in India, but that country has only 4% of global water resources.

The United Nation's Millenium Development Goals #7 is "By 2015 reduce by half the number of people in the world without access to safe drinking water and sanitation.?"

If that goal is met, only 30 to 70 million people will die from preventable water-related diseases. Experts predict that the actual number will be far greater.

To view the 15-minute tape of Sen. Simon's remarks on water issues worldwide during his visit to Philadelphia Water Department, click HERE.

To learn more about The Philadelphia Global Water Initiative, call Niva Kramek at 215-746-0086 or email niva@sas.upenn.edu.

Conference Moderator Stan Laskowski, director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Jim Seif, former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Carol Collier, executive drector of the Delaware River Basin Commission, and Francesca DiCosmo, of the U. S. Department of Environmental Protection, attended the successful kick-off conference for the Philadelphia Global Water Initiative.

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