Town Hall Meeting Public Law 109-121: Water for the Poor Act

PROCEEDINGS  

MR. MARGOLIS: Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to the State Department's Loy Henderson Hall. My name is Jonathan Margolis. I serve as the State Department's special representative for sustainable development.

I would like to welcome you to a town hall meeting on Public Law 109-121, otherwise known as the Water for the Poor Act. We thank you all for coming here to the State Department and braving our security procedures here to provide us with your thoughts and views on this law. We would like to begin this meeting with some opening remarks. It is my pleasure to introduce Claudia McMurray, our Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. Claudia?

MS. MCMURRAY: Thank you, Jonathan. And welcome to all of you. This is a great turnout. And Jonathan has already mentioned the public law number, you all know what it is, and that it is called Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act.

We really welcome the opportunity here at State to work with all of you as well as Congress. There is huge interest as you know in Congress over this issue. And certainly also within our federal family.

All of us need to pull together and figure out how to go forward with the strategy for how the government works on the provision of safe drinking water and sanitation internationally. It is a key element of our broader development efforts. And I just want to read you a quote from President Bush, because this really says it all as far as I'm concerned.

"A world where some live in comfort and plenty while half the human race lives on less than $2 a day is neither just nor stable." So combating poverty and improving economic well-being and frankly improving the environment all at the same time is really what we're trying to do through our various efforts in development and diplomacy at the State Department.

As you all probably have heard many times, the statistic, which is daunting, 1.1 billion people have no access to safe water, 2.6 billion people, which is half of the developing world, have no access to improved sanitation. Studies suggest that 1.7 million deaths each year could be prevented through improved access to safe water and sanitation. That's close to 200 people per hour who could be saved, and most of those people are children under the age of five.

Their lack of access to safe water and sanitation not only undermines human health and dignity but also reduces economic productivity. Research shows that each dollar invested in water and sanitation yields an economic return as much as $30. We have seen cases where water mismanagement and water pollution can reduce GDP by more than two percent, enough to keep a country in poverty or, if remedied, sent on a path towards economic growth.

The World Health Organization estimates that $90 billion could be saved annually by reaching the internationally agreed targets on water, money that could be spent improving schools and increasing business opportunities.

So all that's by way of saying that water is a real priority for us in the federal government, in the executive branch in particular. But I think Congress has demonstrated its desire to make this a priority as well.

If you look back on the 2002 World Summit on sustainable development, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation includes a goal that says, let's reduce by one-half the proportion of people who are unable to reach or afford safe drinking water and the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015.

So to help get to that goal, the U.S. launched the Water for the Poor initiative. Over the three years 1.7 billion was obligated for nearly a hundred activities in developing countries around the world.

Over 24 million people received improved access to safe drinking water and over 26 million people received access to improved sanitation. These results are here and documented. They are not in isolation. Obviously, we didn't do it all by ourselves. We had partnership with NGOs, people in this room, businesses, foundations, and other civil society groups. The Public Law 109-121 calls for the submission of an initial report to Congress by June 1st that addresses a safe water and sanitation strategy.

The purpose of the meeting today of having you all here is to solicit your views on the development of that strategy. And I think in this room we have got, I'm told, 15 water specialists from agencies including USAID, EPA, the Centers for Disease Control, USGS, and NOAA.

We look forward to learning from all of you about your experience and your ideas for the strategy. And we're already reviewing some of the written comments that have been received. And I think we'll share both your written comments and what you say here today with the interagency team.

Just before you make your remarks today, I would just ask that we would particularly welcome ways of addressing ways to increase local financing for water projects, improve governance, integrate water into development programs and other sectors and also our response to disasters - how to build capacity for that and lay the groundwork for long-term sustainable programs.

I think many of you today have already signed up to give remarks. We look forward to hearing them. I also, as I said, encourage you to, if you haven't already, submit written comments to this e-mail address WPACT, that's WPACT2005@state.gov. And the deadline for those written comments is April 30th. So when I call your name, I guess we have a list here, I ask that you push the red button on your desk where the microphone is. Or if you don't have a microphone, step to one of the microphones set up for you to speak. Please limit your comments to three minutes if you can. And assistants standing near you with the microphone will let you know when your time is up. I look forward to hearing what you have to say. I will just go ahead to the list.

COMMENT: Thank you. I wanted to start by thanking the State Department for holding this consultation session on water legislation.

We will hear today about many ways that water is crucial to people and communities around the world, to political stability, to expanding opportunity, to improving health, fostering economic development, furthering education and more.

I also want to thank our government officials both political and career who have taken on this assignment. In my view it is in the best tradition for American diplomacy.

The reality is that there may be little new federal money for water or for anything else. And no one I know wants to see funds shifted from existing good programs.

Consequently, I have come to see this strategy as part of a long-term process. Get the framework right, get started, build on it.

Work by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the Swiss Tropical Institute, the Copenhagen Process and I'm sure others on cost benefit analysis of investing in access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene education show handsome payoffs, as the Assistant Secretary referenced.

Regarding the strategy, there are four key elements in my view. First, we need to articulate the rationale. Why should the U.S. government and Americans more generally care about and invest in water overseas? Understanding our national interest is critical to long-term support from Congress with the public in getting broader attention to the issue.

Second, there is substantial and growing interest in the private sector for water, among NGOs, congregations, civic groups, companies, foundations universities, trade and professional associations. A good strategy would help mobilize and leverage this interest and the private resources they bring, perhaps in concert with the Global Development Alliance. And a good strategy would tap into the growing interest at universities looking for opportunities for training, fellowships, exchanges and the like.

Third, the U.S. Government is not off the hook. We need to draw on U.S. strengths. Technical capacity and skills are needed almost everywhere: science, inventories, mapping, finance, operations and so on. I would like to see this emphasized in U.S. development assistance, drawing on the expertise throughout the U.S. Government, which is considerable, at EPA, at USGS, Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corps, USDA, Department of Energy and so on.

Considerable work is underway at AID and other agencies, I know. But a more coherent and expanded collaboration would in my view yield even greater benefits. Another U.S. strength is our country's convening power. And I would like to see it used to help elevate and guide assistance within multilateral institutions, bilateral development agencies and among willing countries.

Fourth, we need to evaluate and tally the results. Lack of information about accomplishments in this sector, both the numbers and the accompanying personal stories, is a serious shortcoming. Some NGOs do a better job. But overall we need to demonstrate and publicize that these investments are paying off in better lives and greater opportunity.

Though one gets the impression these days that as Americans we are less popular around the world, the U.S. has a lot to offer. And a heightened priority for water overseas gives us something constructive to take head-on. It would be one of the most benign expressions of the U.S. Foreign Policy. Thank you.

MS. MCMURRAY: Thank you.

COMMENT: I'm the Senior Technical Advisor for water and sanitation for Catholic Relief Services, and we are members of the Millennium Water Alliance.

The Water for the Poor Act could be the beginnings of the most significant U.S. foreign assistance program since the establishment of the Marshall Plan in the aftermath of the second World War.

Based on my own experience with water and sanitation development, the following six issues are critical for the future success of the act and for the opportunity that is before us.

Number one. There must be a strong and dedicated water and sanitation secretariat reporting directly to the Director of Foreign Assistance in the Department of State.

The secretariat should have at its core a cadre of experienced and dedicated personnel knowledgeable in water and sanitation development, and backed up by a strengthened and newly empowered USAID as the lead agency for the implementation of the act.

Number two. There also should be an external water and sanitation advisory group comprised of experienced and knowledgeable experts drawn from NGOs, universities and the private sector to advise and challenge the official water and sanitation secretariat. Number three. Priority should be given to the coordination of American development resources through the use of coalitions of public and private organizations, government agencies, NGOs, universities and the private sector.

Number four. Coordination of development efforts also must be emphasized at the host country and community levels where water and sanitation services are most needed. If sustainable services are to be achieved, all relevant parties must be included in the overall planning and implementation, including not only U.S. organizations, but also foreign donors, local governments, indigenous NGOs and the people in the recipient communities.

Number five. Since the U.S. Government alone will never be able to meet the needs of water and sanitation in the poor countries of the world, it should be a firm policy to leverage government resources to tap and harness the vast potential of the American people and the U.S. economy. Whenever possible, support to water and sanitation programs should include cost sharing or some equivalent form of support from all partners, including the recipients of improved water and sanitation services. Number 6, and the final point. Success in achieving the goals of the act should be redefined in terms of sustainability, participation and ownership.

Successful water and sanitation services need to show sustainability over the long term as well as effective participation by key stakeholders at all levels and a sense of ownership in the minds of the users. Thank you for this opportunity. It is my fervent hope that Congress, U.S. Government agencies and the American people seize this opportunity that the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act offers us.

MS. MCMURRAY: Thank you.

COMMENT: Yes. Thank you, Ms. McMurray.

I'm the Director of Stakeholder Relations for Arch Chemicals. I also chair the Disinfection Issues Team for the Chlorine Chemistry Council, and today I represent the Chlorine Chemistry Foundation. We partner with nonprofit organizations to address drinking water access, treatment and distribution. We have sponsored projects in Africa and in Central America, and several of our partners and colleagues are here today. Today I have three points to share for the record as we go forward together in addressing this global crisis.

First, that microbial quality is critical to improving safe water access. Second, we would like to encourage that U.S. supported initiatives should promote the adoption of proven disinfection technologies. And third, that chlorine disinfection methods are proven to be practical and cost-effective for large municipal systems, but also for small rural community systems and for point-of-use household water treatment.

We like to highlight our successes with the new forest project work in Central America represented here today by International Center , the CDC, Safe Water System and the West Africa Water Initiative. We offer our assistance to all initiatives addressing safe water access and disinfection. Thank you very much on behalf of the Chlorine Chemistry Foundation.

MS. MCMURRAY: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you. I'm the Chief Water Environment and Sanitation for UNICEF. And UNICEF is also an advisor to the Millennium Water Alliance.

First, I would like to thank the State Department for convening this very important session here today and for the opportunity to speak here.

In June, WHO and UNICEF will be launching the next report on the status of the millennium development goals for water supply and sanitation, which show there is no change of status in the figures and the situation is stagnant in terms of the 1.1 billion that lack access to safe water and the 2.6 billion people, nearly half the world's population, that lack access to basic sanitation.

Poor hygiene, sanitation of water is still the primary cause of diarrhea, killing around 1.6 million children a year, ore than any other illness. And obviously as well, reducing the burden of disease and the billions of episodes of diarrhea that obviously children suffer from every year is also of paramount importance.

The long term cost to society of not meeting the MDG targets is several times greater and the evidence is there in the report that has been conducted by the World Health Organization which has shown the socioeconomic benefits would be between $3 and $34 from improving water and sanitation services.

UNICEF has been working in water and sanitation for 40 years. And we obviously have accumulated a wealth of lessons and experience over that period.

We have developed a new strategy for water supply and sanitation that was approved by our executive board in January, which outlines strengthening UNICEF's support to achievement of the millennium development goals through our support to three major areas of work. Rural water supply and sanitation, where the coverage rate is the lowest. Support to major emergencies with an effective transition to reconstruction and recovery efforts.

And lastly, support to water supply and sanitation at schools and health clinics to ensure that the younger generation are encouraged to adopt good hygiene practices from an early enough age.

Let me very briefly outline a few of the most important principles that our strategy is based upon. It is very much poverty focused and targets the poorest. In very much the national policies and legislation, backed up by effective regulatory mechanisms that favor the poor, are a necessary starting point.

There is evidence that a greater focus on the household level increases the effectiveness of sectoral programs, particularly in the areas of household water treatment and hygiene promotion.

Nevertheless, targeting of households is only effective within the enabling environment provided by effective community and intermediate level programs and support.

Second, service sustainability based on thorough financial analysis. Sustainable services must be paid for. Current approaches tend to focus on the sustainability of individual facilities and particularly on system operation and maintenance. And a large share of the financing should be recovered by user charges. However, it is clear that some aspects will always be funded by other sources.

The critical aspect is to ensure that, whatever the sources of finance, all service provision is fully costed and that sources are identified to meet all costs.

And matching service levels to user needs is extremely important. This approach also ensures that the necessary systems are in place at the sub-national level, to allow families and communities to be able to obviously afford the services and to upgrade their services when they have the means to do so.

Lastly, is the focus on working within effective partnerships. Reinventing the wheel is obviously not a useful use of energy or resources.

And there is no place any longer for partners to be working in isolation and not pooling their efforts and resources if we're to make better progress than was made in the 80s and 90s and avoid the high percentage of systems that are not functioning, as high as 50 percent in some Sub-Saharan African countries.

Both large scale and smaller agencies need to ensure that they are heeding the lessons learned and ensuring that they are supporting a cohesive and effective national strategy and program to reach the MDGs.

In summary, UNICEF is committed to supporting the strategy developed to implement the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act. We will lend our support at the level where it will make the most impact, at the local level in our support to capacity building efforts of national programs to ensure that the resources get to those that need them the most. Thank you.

MS. MCMURRAY: Thank you very much. Next speaker is the National Wildlife Federation.

COMMENT: First, I would like to reiterate the comments from UNICEF on the importance of sanitation and the need to emphasize that in the plan. The best way to maintain a sustainable supply of clean drinking water is to protect fresh water ecosystems, and providing sanitation services is a critical piece of that.

Second, with Mr. Tobias' appointment and the reintegration emerging of USAID with the State Department, I understand that there will be -- the State Department will be writing individual country plans on how to move forward, and I would really urge that what comes out of this plan on water be integrated with all of those plans on water and sanitation.

And finally, third, that the plans here and the steps here also would be integrated and coordinated with other donors. Thank you.

MS. MCMURRAY: Thank you. Next is a six years old boy.

COMMENT: I am helping -- I made up something to help Haiti with their dirty water that helps them get their clean water. I started the Water Club because it makes sense because it was a club working on water, so it is the Water Club.

[Referencing a Picture Book] This is a picture of dirty water. This is some more dirty water and some more dirty water. Here is a tub that I strained the water with, and a tub that it was cleaning. These are pills that I got.

This is me stirring the dirty water with the tablet in it. You need to put the tablet in because right now Haiti is getting sick because of dirty water. This is me drinking the clean water. This is me with my goal of 80 people. I have helped 135 families to get clean water for a year.

MS. MCMURRAY: Thank you very much. We clearly need to sign you up for the State Department. Thank you.

COMMENT: My name is Craig Just and I'm with Ely. He is good stuff.

I'm honored to contribute to the town hall meeting for the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act. I would like to thank my host from Population Services International for making my involvement possible.

I'm inspired by the six-year-old in his efforts to promote household water treatment solutions such as PUR Purifier of Water on behalf of thousands of poverty-stricken Haitians. His actions shed light not only on Haiti , but on regions around the world that need our assistance for sustainable development of water and sanitation resources.

By the time he is eligible for his driver's license, the world will have hopefully met its goal of cutting in half the number of people without access to safe drinking water. I will rejoice when we meet that millennium development goal, yet my heart will ache for the 600 million people we will not have yet reached.

On the eve of Hurricane Jean in the fall of 2004, the Coralville United Methodist Church in Iowa raised $,500 to facilitate PUR packet use in flood- ravaged Gonaives , Haiti , the site of over 2000 storm-related fatalities.

The money was as a result of a simple e-mail noting that about $0.07, the cost of a PUR packet, could provide safe drinking water for a family of four for several days. The congregation had seen the power of PUR during water purification demonstrations performed just weeks earlier, and the impact was clear.

In the spring of 2005, a Procter and Gamble executive, a physician, myself and a mix of public health and engineering students from the University of Iowa traveled throughout Haiti and among other things witnessed how PUR empowers people in to the developing world.

Again, the impact was clear. Household water treatment and safe storage strategies work. In closing, as a representative of the College of Engineering at the University of Iowa and in my capacity as an Engineer for a Sustainable World Student Chapter Advisor, I want to highlight the significant role engineers will play in responding to the call to action outlined in the Senator Paul Simon Water Act for the Poor.

The act calls us to, one, expand affordable and equitable access to safe water and sanitation for underserved populations. This activity is squarely addressed, in part, through household water treatment approaches, but it will also be facilitated by larger scale engineered solutions.

Two, support to the design construction and operation of water delivery and sanitation systems. And three, improve the safety and reliability of water supplies including environmental management. Engineering groups such as Engineers for a Sustainable World, Engineers Without Borders, Water for People, and Engineering Missions International, in partnership with Rotary International, USAID, the World Health Organization, United Nations, and countless other organizations will provide these engineered solutions. And four, improve the capacity of recipient governments and local communities including capacity building programs for improved water resource management.

Places of engineering instruction through education exchange and by the development of curriculum can clearly play a role in this activity, which will build capacity in developing communities but will also build capacity and compassion in the next generation of developed world engineers.

Thank you.

MS. MCMURRAY: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you. I'm from PSI. I'm the senior manager for Maternal and Child Health. I'm here to advocate for more emphasis on point-of-use household water treatment systems.

I want to emphasize five points. The first one being that point-of-use interventions are synergistic with other interventions. There is no doubt that we need infrastructure interventions to increase volume of water. This includes wells, bore holes, springs, et cetera.

However, quality interventions are costly and tend to take quite a long time. In the mean time, we really need to focus on water quality interventions. These are urgent and can be done fast and cheaply. PSI has demonstrated that with relatively small investments and working along with the CDC, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, we can make the water that people are currently drinking much safer. Number two, these are rapid. From the time of funding of a program to the time that people are actually receiving safe drinking water, it is from four to six months.

Number three, these are low cost. Point-of-use water treatment like the bottle that I hold in my hand based on dilute sodium hypochlorite can treat the water for a family for less than a penny a day for a family of four.

Number four. These interventions are private-sector driven. We use local producers of the solution and of the plastic bottles, and then we plug into private distribution networks with wholesalers and retailers to drive this product into the rural areas and peri-urban areas where they wouldn't otherwise reach.

Number five, and perhaps most importantly, these are scaleable. With appropriate distribution, marketing and education, these low-cost interventions can reach millions of households in relatively short periods of time. This has been demonstrated in several countries. Most notably, Zambia , where over two million bottles of this solution, each treating about 1000 liters of water, were distributed last year.

In conclusion, we have affordable technologies that can save lives immediately and we know how to do it at scale. It would be a tragedy if this new strategy did not include a concerted focus on household water treatment technologies. Thank you.

MS. MCMURRAY: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you very much. I represent Water Advocates here today. Thanks to all for assembling us here.

Water Advocates is a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington dedicated to increasing American financial support and involvement for worldwide access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

This is a historic moment. Not because we're here today, but because over 83 percent of the world today has sustainable access to safe drink water already. The opportunity to find the needs of the additional 17 percent has never been better. And we applaud the U.S. Government for recognizing and supporting us through the Water for the Poor Act.

We here all know that the vast majority of the investment required to achieve universal coverage has and will continue to come from the developing countries themselves.

The U.S. government needs to seize on this unprecedented opportunity afforded by this legislation to increase its catalytic role over the coming years.

With that said, the Water for the Poor Act implementation strategy should be concerned, not just about water sanitation and hygiene, but also about how safe water contributes positively and directly in most cases to the global public health challenge to anti-hunger initiatives, to environmental protection, to poverty reduction getting back to Ms. McMurray's statement and quotation from President Bush a few minutes ago, how it contributes to global and national security and how it contributes to educational opportunities for women, girls and so on.

The challenge now is not to move from rhetoric to action. As I see it, the challenge is to move from action to action at an unprecedented scale and intensity, fortified by a global collective political will.

The challenge is to move to a level of activity which will result not in a sector barely keeping pace with population growth, but in an unstoppable movement toward the goal of universal coverage which we already enjoy in the United States and in Europe .

Now, the U.S. Government can promote this issue not just by financing solutions to the problem but by publicly and strenuously attesting, both domestically and overseas, to the overall importance of safe drinking water and sanitation. This attestation itself will create leverage opportunities, will create multiplier effects within the private sector, and it is a vital contributor -- this attestation is a vital contributor to this unprecedented scale in intensity which must be brought to bear.

We at Water Advocates aim to assist the U.S. Government, the corporate sector, the foundation sector, civic and religious organizations, to become more aware of, to engage, to contribute to the sector in such a manner that not only provides water and sanitation to communities in need, but does so in a manner consistent with and complimentary to those organizations, existing mission statements and priorities.

On behalf of Water Advocates, I do thank you for the opportunity to contribute to these proceedings, and do trust that the act will be implemented, funded and expanded during the coming years.

Thank you.

MS. MCMURRAY: Thanks.

COMMENT: Thank you very much, Secretary McMurray. I appreciate your holding this meeting today.

This is a historic day. I do want to adopt the 42 minutes of testimony that has already been heard. I will just add about three more minutes. Called upon by the administration of the United States of the United States Government to help develop a plan to meet the Millennium Development Goals for water and sanitation, the Millennium Water Alliance was created including America 's largest and leading NGOs in the field of water and sanitation.

When we set the organization up, we set it up with implementers. I have been heard to say that if I had all the money spent talking about water, everybody in the world would have water today. The goal is safe water and sanitation health and hygiene, WASH, for half a billion people by 2015. The cost of WASH utilizing the MWA business model that has been developed is not only less than the MWA's own cost estimates, but below the cost projected by the World Bank by a substantial sum.

The importance of this cause cannot be overstated. As you may know, the lack of clean water and sanitation have been identified as the leading causes of frustration, leading to terrorism and violence in the world by the Egyptian water sector.

I will make that slide available to you. I believe that there is no greater intervention that can be organized, orchestrated or implemented in the world to make a change than clean water and sanitation. You will notice in this slide that under hopelessness, that the lack of social security provides no emphasis whatsoever for frustration or violence. People just want to know how can I live tomorrow. We have seen the link between these inhumane living conditions and the frustration leading to violence. Now is the time to fix it.

I just returned from the World Water Forum in Mexico city where we were surrounded by police dodging between those who are arguing over free water and those who are arguing over the economic value of water. I will tell you that all the water the world has ever had ever, will have, has never been made by man. It has been made by God who put it here in the first place. So I have to go with one side and say water is free.

I want to tell you, on the other hand, if you want somebody to get it for you, if you want to hire a little boy with a donkey to go pick up your water, you're going to pay him. If you want pipes to your house, you are going to pay. If you want electricity to pump the water out of the ground, you are going to pay.

It is important that people recognize that water does have an economic value whether or not they are spending their own funds and their own physical efforts or hiring somebody else to get it for them.

The Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act has elevated water as a tenant of U.S. foreign policy. Again, I think it is the most important foreign policy that the United States has. I will reiterate what you heard earlier.

I will tell you as a business man that I may be one of the people around the table who is not paid to help on water, but I pay to help on water. Building a country, though, is like building a business. And it begins with the right foundation. If you begin with a foundation of cell phones, radios, bridges, without providing for basic water and sanitation, the intervention will fail. Using a baseball analogy, I would like to say that water is first base. Water, provides life. There is no cow, there is no fish, there is no plant, there is no human that lives without water. Water is life.

The second base is health. Clean water will empty half of the hospital beds in developing countries. 80 percent of sickness and premature death. You can't even treat HIV/AIDS without water. I have been assured by our government that nobody without access to clean water will be provided Anti-Retro Virals because that would be a waste of funds.

The third base is education. The brain cannot learn without clean water. Yet there are 19,000 schools in Kenya that have been built much with funds from the United States without clean water in the schools. I say do not build another school without clean water. Put a bore hole under a tree if necessary and give the kids clean water so that they might learn.

Living Water, which was founded back in 1990, has focused on water in schools. We have seen test scores go up. We have seen School for the Messiah go from having no more than two graduates admitted to higher education within a four-year period with 25 percent of the graduates of that class being admitted to higher education in a country where there is only room for 18 percent.

A person who is alive, healthy and educated has hope for a job, and home plate is that job. It is economic development. A job creating investments happen only where there is a consistent supply of clean water.

Clean water not only covers the bases, scores a home run, but envision yourself on the pitcher's mound in the middle of the baseball diamond, and indeed this is a diamond, water sparkles like a diamond, and the "P" in the middle of the baseball diamond stands for the achievement of peace.

The millennium development goals can be met. I hear people who say that we don't have enough time to meet them, we're not going fast enough. I will tell you if we start with $20 million a day and double it every year, we can do it in the next decade.

The game is up. We're waiting on a new umpire and we're waiting for the call of batter up. I appreciate your help. I can give you plenty more examples, but my time is up.

MS. MCMURRAY: Thank you.

Anyway, I unfortunately cannot stay for the balance of this town hall meeting. I'm going to turn things over to Jonathan Margolis who many of you know, has worked on this issue for quite some time.

I want to thank you. I've really learned a lot from what I have heard so far. I plan to hear what the rest of you have to say after this.

I look forward to working with all of you. Thank you. I'll let Jonathan continue here.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you, Claudia.

COMMENT: Thank you. I'm with Sister Cities International. I work with our network for sustainable development, which is a group of sister cities and partnerships focused on issues of water sanitation, health care and other related economic development issues.

There are three main points that I wanted to focus on in terms of how we can help achieve the issue regarding water.

First is the support and development of more city-to-city cooperation efforts. Sister Cities International is based on connecting US cities with international cities.

We're currently in 134 countries around the world, and it is through these partnerships that many of the development activities that need to take place can take place. And through exchanges with technical advisors, local citizens and other folks who are very concerned about these issues, we can actually create a avenue and a direction for change that can occur at the local level where many of these issues are affecting folks the most.

The second major issue of course is capacity building. In order for these communities to be able to provide the services for their citizens, they have to have the capacity to do this. And I think through this act and through the subsequence of projects and programs that can come out of it, we can really focus on developing that capacity and building those bridges and ties together to improve water sanitation and health care related services for the everyday citizens who are affected the most.

The third point I want to bring up is regarding results-oriented programs. We just got done doing a pilot project in Tomale, focused on the Millennium Development Goals in Ghana . One of the main things that came out from the citizens in Tomale was that they were tired of study after study after study. They are ready to work. They know what the needs of the community are. They know what needs to be done and what to focus on. And what they need the most right now is financing and programs that will get them to be able to meet those needs.

That is what they want. They want to be able to bring water and sanitation services to their own homes, their own communities. If we can find a way through this act and through subsequent programs to provide those tools and provide that financing, then I think we have done a great job in bringing the change that is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals that the United Nations has set for us.

So on that note, I just want to conclude and thank the committee, and thank the State Department for bringing this public forum together, and I hope that we can continue to move forward on this very important issue.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you, Jonathan. And thank you to the State Department for this opportunity. I'm from the Woodrow Wilson Center here in town, a place where we hope that a forum like this can continue whether it is at the State Department or other institutions around town like ours, where this group should be getting together on a regular basis because it is such a rich group and we hope that we can help in that.

Like previous comments, my comments will be based on the foundation that we can all agree that it would be terrific to have visions of a lot more resources devoted from the U.S. Government to this.

And of course we would hope that that occurs, but also then focus my comments assuming that's not necessarily the case, because we want to try to find ideas and support developments that are going to make progress but not necessarily that will also be done, reflecting the reality of the budget situation we have now.

So three very quick points and in some ways reiterating some of the points that have been made. Leadership and priority for this issue. Obviously from the Hill, for the first time in a very neat way we have heard that that is the case, a priority from their perspective, water and sanitation.

But I would urge as we go forward that we work on diversifying leadership within our government and other governments. By that I mean really taking some of the very rich evidence that we have here from the interventions and experience in this room and taking it out to other ministries.

So the World Water Forum is frankly not enough, if we get the Water Ministers together. We need the Education Ministry, the Finance Ministry, the Health Ministry obviously for some of the connections that everybody is talking about.

So in that sense within our own government, within the State Department itself, but also particularly within the governments that we're working with in foreign assistance, to bring these other ministries to the table. Because I think it is critical to have the success which is again reflecting on a previous point about where the money is going to come from and reiterating the importance of that, and looking at financing in other -- financing for water because the money is going to largely be coming from the developing countries themselves. And water foreign assistance and sanitation foreign assistance is always going to be a small percentage of the total.

So reiterate the call that we have heard here and also that we have heard from the podium and the State Department's efforts to find ways to really explore how some of our municipal financing mechanisms, where they can be applied or setting up the governance structure and institutional financial structures so the various bonds that are used here to bring this money in to bear. Again, trying to find ways to generate the money from inside the country.

Finally, third, and this is certainly a bias of the work that we do, but I would say that the Water for the Poor Act at the very end highlights in some ways a different level analysis than a lot of the discussions we're having here. And that's this notion of the kind of geo-political water conflict and cooperation, whether it is within states or across states.

I would urge us not to lose that, because in some ways it can be fairly or unfairly perceived as somewhat distant from reality on the ground in providing clean water and adequate sanitation.

But I would say whether it is at the basin level, the Nile Basin Initiative, there's a basin-wide enterprise that tries to find the various ways that water benefits in terms of development in all those countries coming together.

That is about development. It is about how you use water, but it is also about peace. That has the ability to really make a difference on the ground. Or whether it is ground-up and friends there at the Middle East that's working with schools between Palestinian Israeli, Jordanian Israeli, and bringing it up to an international level: things that the U.S. Government are supporting but could support more, could support in different regions and take some of those lessons learned. So it is clear I think that there are ways for us to tie this high politics discussion to delivering water and sanitation on the ground.

I hope we continue to have that as part of the discussion as well. Thank you very much.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I represent Global Water.

Global Water was founded in 1972 by Ambassador, Former Ambassador John McDonald, one of the State Department's successes out there. I know many of you know Ambassador John McDonald. He regrets not being here today for himself.

First, I enjoyed the quote that Mc Murray provided, Ms. McMurray provided. It sets a nice tone.

But I also have to remind myself and others that the very same administration that gives that nice quote is responsible for the decline in funds. I just came back from Honduras . And USAID can correct me but they saw a 60 percent reduction in funds in Honduras .

And these are catastrophic to the relationships with NGOs, with government agencies in providing water and sanitation.

And like I said I hope to be corrected on that, but I'm afraid I just came back from the region. So that tends to provide a little more information than inside the Beltway sometimes. So it is a matter of saying as Pogo quoted years ago, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

With due respect for the quotes, and they are great, let's recognize that we're the people here and the administration right now is responsible and that's why we're here so let's work with it. But not get too excited by quotes alone.

Because we're the people who are making the decisions on the budget and are making the wrong decisions today.

That's your Congressmen, Senators and our professional -- our government employees. I had have a 10-year badge, my 10-year government pin. I counted I had done 12 years, so that was enough.

So I know what you can do in the government and I'm not pointing a finger at everybody. I said this is the group.

With that said, I see three points. Policy. What policy will the U.S. Government promulgate regarding human rights for the access to water? If it doesn't come out of this group, then we're not going hear about it. It has to be tied to that.

I repeat. What policy will U.S. Government promulgate regarding human rights for access to water? I appreciate Millennium Water Alliance's discussion of the economics of water.

Three years in Africa I watched young women and girls every day walk to get their water, and they were only risking their lives. I don't know what you put on the tap value for that. But it was only their lives. I think there is a tremendous discussion that needs to be done there.

What policy? We've got a law, but that doesn't fit on the bumper sticker. What is the policy we're going to promulgate as the State Department, Dobriansky and Dr. Rice, what are they going to be saying to people as they go out there? I think this group deserves an answer on that.

Second, financing. Can the US shift the existing financing mechanisms to promote a bypass of the middle management handlers and improve efficiencies of local regional programs? Big bank model and the trickle-down from below to bureaucracies. When it doesn't work. We know it. Point-to-point philanthropy, that's why NGOs have the highest efficiency.

I personally investigated the International Living Waters. There have 15 percent overhead and one of the best ratings for getting water in the field. And I know there are others like that. But that's what I'm looking for.

So we need to get directly there. And just give up the fact that the World Bank has three full-time interior decorators, and I work for UNEP, always appalled me because we didn't have any interior decorators.

Third, governance. What is State and U.S. Government willing to do to enable co-governance of the monitoring and review of policy and program implementation. I follow the Catholic Relief Services, for providing the suggestions, very succinctly, and I think he deserves an answer. How do we do the co-governance.

That includes State Department, USAID, what's going on in Congress, the NGOs and in the UN. We talked about NGOs but they are not elected. So we had a real tough time in the UN bringing it to the tables. And Johannesburg was one of our best efforts, but it was still imperfect.

So it is nice, it's in the books, but nobody knows how to do it. Again, I applaud Dr. Warner for laying down some concrete proposals and that's what I would like to see.

Three simple questions. I would like with respect to the State Department running this that those be provided long before June the 1st. Thank you very much.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you for the invitation.

I represent BEAD, Bedrock Exploration and Development.

I'll touch on a couple of topics here. One is infrastructure, the World Bank, capacity and corruption and other issues.

Most of the countries that I deal in, which is primarily the African continent, most of the infrastructures in place was built during the colonial era, during colonial rule.

They have been poorly maintained and thus you are lucky if you are using these systems that 50 percent of what you put into it with regards to water is not lost. Generally, that's what I'm finding. You have up to 50 percent loss once you put the water in there.

Of that 50 percent, what is delivered you will possibly get, be able to collect maybe on 20 percent of that. So you can see right off you have a problem from an economic point of view.

So the infrastructure has to be strengthened. The Word Bank in general does a fairly good job in dealing with infrastructure issues.

However, the World Bank only deals with other governments. To me, if you have a government that has been prone to corruption, then that only empowers corrupt governments. Therefore, that whole World Bank model needs to be stream-lined just a little bit. I'll circle back to corruption here in a little bit.

Another thing that I think has been a major handicap is concessionary financing. Concessionary financing that generally leads to grants. To me, this is just a huge model to handicap developing nations. Say it by its word, it is essentially welfare.

When you have welfare systems in place, there is just no advantage to sound economic policies or any type of sound management in place, thus, you have countries that have historically received this concessionary financing, mismanaging everything you put in there.

So you have to change this whole review.

There has to be complete new policies put into place.

The company I represent is BEAD, Bedrock Exploration and Development. Our model is BOTT: build, operate, train, and transfer.

We do this completely from the private sector. We put in long-term financing to drill deep bore holes in highly fractured bedrock, in the scientific community known as mega-watersheds.

We put in the long-term financing for a number of reasons. Primarily, so that it will not affect the poorest of the poor, and generally, we try to put in contracts up to 25 years. That way we can receive our rate of return. But it has no effect on the tariffs.

Now, I get to corruption. Everything you do in this industry from a private sector is going to be tinged in some way with corruption in a lot of these developing countries. The average salary for a minister is $600, plus living allowances.

So funding has to be tied to good governance and strong oversight. Here is one way they see that this corruption is affecting the developing countries.

In most developed countries you have the major water users essentially subsidizing the low users or the citizens.

In most developing countries it's just the reverse. You have the major water users getting the lowest tariffs. And it's primarily driven because they are able to pay the right people.

Other issues that you have to deal with is just this whole bureaucratic issues in building in these countries. You have pre-sets and subsets. I'll just name a few. You have technical advisory committees. You have public utility regulatory commissions. You have water resources commission. You have EPAs. You have Board of Directors, electric co-ops, managing directors, NGOs. I won't even start to begin to tell you about tribalism.

More about that later. Then you have got to stream-line these issues with OPIC and ExIm.

You have all these conditions precedents before you get disbursements. I could go on but I'm down to less than 10 seconds. Thank you.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you. On behalf of the World Conservation Union, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to provide comments for safe water and sanitation strategies.

I am a senior advisor with the Washington D.C. Multi-Lateral Office of the Union . Our Union is one of the world's largest and most important conservation networks, bringing together 113 government agencies, more than 850 NGOs, approximately 10,000 scientists and experts from 181 countries in a unique worldwide partnership. We have provided more extensive written comments which we'll leave with you today. Our comments provide details on the Union 's priorities and the water sector, on novel approaches in developing countries, and in challenges faced by water practitioners.

However, I would like to highlight a few messages and examples drawn from our comments which might add to the discussion today.

In September 2005, we developed an international initiative to directly contribute to the reduction of rural poverty in priority countries. This initiative is a key priority for our union since water is the single most important resource for the rural poor.

It is the basis for their nutrition and health and at the same time it can be lethal to them through water born diseases or floods. We can greatly facilitate reaching the rural poor, with appropriate tools and actions to improve water management all along the water chain, from protection of watersheds to secure access at the house hold level.

The Union has a particular focus on balancing the different uses of water.

Safeguarding ecosystem services and working within various river basins around the world to demonstrate best practices. We are continuing to promote novel approaches in our work with developing countries. Some notable examples of our work in developing countries are found in recent events and publications launched at the World Water Forum last month, which many of you were probably able to observe.

For example, we have analyzed legal frameworks concerning water resources in Latin American countries. We have documented our blue print for providing response to natural disasters. We have established and maintained a strong and vigorous program called The Water and Nature Initiative.

We have also recently initiated efforts to link with African American faith based groups in implementing water and sanitation projects in Africa . Establishing links between our organization and the Faith For Africa Effort, who will be providing comments at this town hall meeting later on today.

In support of poverty reduction, we have promoted improved management of water in dry land areas in the Sahel and restored natural flood plains in Mauritania to bring back water dependent livelihoods. And we have worked on better water and wetland-related resources management in the greater Meghna area in Bangladesh and other countries. And many other activities really too numerous to detail here. In closing, however, I would say that advancing foreign policy in the water sector can make a great difference in the lives and livelihoods of priority developing countries.

We pledge our support as a Union and our expertise to help move this agenda forward. And we would be happy to work with you and other government and non-government entities in contributing scientific technical and experience based assessments in water related projects and programs.

I thank you again for hosting this town hall meeting and for allowing the U.S. the opportunity to provide brief comments. Thank you.

MR. MARGOLIS:

COMMENT: Good afternoon.

I'm a representative of the Sankofa Community Development Corporation and the Metro Economic Community Development Corporation on behalf of the New Psalmist Baptist Church and the Potter's House in Dallas Texas where the Bishops are Bishop Walter S. Thomas Senior and Bishop T.D. Jakes.

We're a consortium of faith-based institutions that have come together to work on a project called Faith for Africa .

The project is named Faith for Africa because we believe that where there is great faith there can be great change. This work began in 2004 in Nairobi Kenya and has plans to provide services throughout Africa .

Faith for Africa focuses on providing clean drinking water by digging wells, providing food and relief for people that live in barren regions of Africa, providing medicine and medical camps for the poor and the diseased, partnering with organizations that teach conservation, hygiene, agriculture, academics, health and commerce, collaborating with organizations at international humanitarian agencies for social development of communities, and meeting and working beside government, business, and faith leaders to develop a master plan for improving community life in Africa.

In two years, we have been able to provide clean drinking water for some 240,000 people. We've provided medical care for over 6,000 people.

We've worked with the public school systems to improve the quality of education to children in Kenya . And we have gathered some 400,000 people in support of the effort faith for Africa, from Kenya , from the Sudan , as well as from Uganda .

We believe that success of the Water for the Poor Act as is based on partnerships between government, nongovernment agencies, business leaders and the faith-based community. We thank you for your time and your comments.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you, Reverend.

COMMENT: Thank you very much. I was, for a number of years, Director of Drinking Water Standards at EPA. I have been for a number of years working in concert with WHO in the development of drinking water guidelines, household water treatment, et cetera.

I would like to say a few words primarily focusing on smaller communities and household applications.

I think, in general, history has shown that money is important but it is not the answer. That the real key to success is on-the-ground training support and buy-in from the locals who are the beneficiaries. And they need to understand that this is an important commodity and that they will be beneficiaries. So that buy-in is really essential.

I think the good news is that safe water really isn't rocket science. It is pretty fundamental conceptually. Protect the source. Filter it.

Disinfect it as needed. There are many hundreds of technologies, commercial and otherwise, that are available to do this.

I just recommend and encourage that, as have you heard from several others, to do indeed take into consideration those small simple cheap effective technologies that work. And we know chlorine works. A drop or two saves many lives.

But there are also some of the more complex technologies that will remove arsenic, if that's needed and fluoride, et cetera, up the line.

But the key again, as always, is access, low cost, training, sustainability. And I think there is an important role for the private sector to provide this, on-the-ground local private sector as well as private sector that produce some of these more complex systems.

My other hat here today is NSF International, which is a standard setting and certification organization for water treatment chemicals and equipment. And the message there I believe is that among these many technologies that exist, it is really important that they actually work, that they have been shown to work, that they have been tested against the appropriate standards so that they deliver what they promise.

And there are standards that exist for most of these kinds of technologies. There are systems for evaluating them. One of those systems, in fact, is EPA's Environmental Technology Verification Program.

So I think all those working together can provide a much greater assurance of success so that the time and the investment hasn't been wasted so that the technology that is applied is indeed going to be effective and successful.

So I guess the bottom line I would say is the technology is not limiting. Some of it is extremely inexpensive and affordable. And I think the whole range of technology should be acceptable, including even bottled water in certain circumstances where it is the most effective way to do it. Including, in fact, in small communities in the United States in some situations. They have some similar problems that they must face.

So be creative. Use all the resources. Make sure they are effective. There are systems for assuring they are effective. And then of course provide the delivery mechanism that generates the buy-in from the locals, and provides that opportunity for sustainability in the long run. Thank you.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you. I'm an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Counsel International Program.

I want to say thank you to the committee for holding this meeting but would like to express NRDC's pleasure with the positive element in the legislative language coming from Congress which highlights the growing global water crisis.

We recognize that this bill is the start of a process for which a great deal of resources will be required by State Department to carry out the intent of the legislation.

Therefore, I would like to highlight three features in particular that I think the committee should take into account in moving forward.

The first one is political will. There needs to be a sense of fostering of political will by the United States in both the host country as well as in our own Congress.

There should be synergies on a political level. Coordination with USAID missions, national governments and Ministries. There needs to be a raising of awareness within countries where aid is being delivered.

Solutions likely will vary within each community, but will rely heavily on what my predecessor was just talking about, the buy-in among local people.

Education of the public through local partners is important to the success of this process. Also I would like to engage the political will of the U.S. taxpayer and Congress.

There needs to be a raising of awareness that water could be, and should be, addressed in a cross-sectoral fashion, where funding does exist, such as in child survival and biodiversity.

We are pleased with the legislation and we would like to see Congress commit resources both in terms of capacity, time management, business management, on economic, social and political levels.

With regards to the second point, the U.S. should identify best practices to promote the effective use of U.S. dollars in alleviating the global water issues. These best practices should identify that alleviating the water crisis is a complex social issue and will require appropriate approaches for delivering effective assistance that go beyond money.

Finally, I would like to conclude that the third feature the U.S. should integrate into implementing that this act is to recognize the strengths that the U.S. has to offer. I believe these strengths include innovative financial mechanisms and technological solutions.

Innovative financial mechanisms include revolving funds. But while these institutional and human management capacity practices are being developed we cannot wait for them to begin because lives are in danger today.

Therefore, while these support promoting the delivery of safe piped water as a long term goal, we hope the act can promote in parallel low technology solutions, which can respond immediately to the public health crisis. For effective implementation of this act, we would like to see both a combination of intervention and prevention. Thank you.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Hi. I'm a staff officer with the Water Science and Technology Board, which is part of the National Research Council. We do very little. We mostly study what other people do, so I have absolutely no credibility standing here.

But having said that, I would like to emphasize three points as part of the sentence that we need to bring science and technology to bear for sustainable water resource management.

And the three words that matter to me there are science and technology, sustainable and water resource management.

Taking sustainable first, it is very difficult to argue with people who say we need to drill a bunch of wells and get some water to people who are dying.

Having said that, where can you find good, reliable, honest partners to work with locally who are interested in longer term studies in sustainable water resource management? In understanding what they have in their basins, how much do we have available, are we going to have arsenic problems because we just went out and drilled 10 million wells, are the water tables going to drop precipitously so that 10 years after we drilled all these wells there isn't going to be anything left in the ground?

So the emphasis there on, if you have some good partners who are interested in sustainable work, I hope you will support them.

The science and technology for that of course is everything from remote sensing to modeling to monitoring to stream gauges. There is a range of very high-tech solutions to very low-tech solutions and obviously that would depend on the location.

The third part then is the water resource management, thinking in terms of basins, and several of you have touched on issues of biodiversity and ecology, health.

And the advantage then of working with partners who are interested in the overall water resource picture is you not only deal with a lot of these issues simultaneously, flooding would be another one, but they also represent another potential source of cost-sharing.

So I would just like to then say that where there is an interest in a longer term perspective, I hope that will also be part of the program. Thank you.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you. You had it perfectly right. I'm Director of the International Eye Foundation. We do water peripherally, but it is very important. And I wanted to focus just a little bit on trachoma.

People have mentioned multiplier affects. Trachoma is the leading cause of preventable blindness in the world. It is an ancient disease, communicable, it was known to the Egyptians, it was in the United States on Indian Reservations up through the 1980s. In the turn of the 20th century, people were turned away from Ellis Island , Europeans who came here if they had any evidence of trachoma.

Today, the World Health Organization estimates there is still 84 million people infected with trachoma in 55 countries, and that's mainly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East .

7.6 million have the complicated -- complication eyelid scarring, which leads to blindness. And 1.3 million are blind. Now that 1.3 million estimate is down from 5.9 million in 1998 because of community development. These figures I just presented are 2002. Just really a 4-year difference. That's also due to better studies, I must admit.

Now, antibiotic eye ointment cures the disease. And Pfizer's donation of Zythromycin has made a huge impact on doing community-based mass distribution of the drug to cure the disease.

The problem is people get re-infected when their eyes are dirty and flies are attracted to the eyes and flies carry the disease. So without water, they can't keep their eyes clean. They get re-infected. The problem exacerbates.

So water is a huge issue for the eye care community. In our own program in Malawi where we have been working since 1975, a Trachoma study was done in 1983. And then again in 1999. Prevalence studies just looking at those two time periods.

But the cases of active disease, the infection stage were reduced by 50 percent. And the eyelid scarring reduced by more than 80 percent. And that was because of community development which included bore holes, wells and women using manual foot pumps and things like that.

And this was a 1999 study. It was before the advent of the Zythromax being donated by Pfizer. So it is not just treatment. This reinfection and prevention of reinfection is hugely important. UNICEF is very familiar with that for sure.

So what I wanted to say is really, the real effect and a lot of impact comes from international NGOs and NGOs working in communities making bore holes, wells and women using these manual foot pumps available that are made locally and maintained locally. It is really hugely important. And so in the prevention of Trachoma, the multiplying effect is people who are not blind can work and care for their children, they can work in their garden, use water to grow food, sell the food to make income to maintain the water pump.

And then the children can also go to school, they are not left at home caring for blind parents and blind grandparents.

So this is not totally about water, but water makes a huge difference and we don't have trachoma in this country anymore because as people have said everybody has access to water, close access to water. Thank you.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me to participate in this meeting.

I'm an international consultant and I have worked extensively in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some of the projects I have worked on have been with the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. And my comments here today are articulating briefly concerns from a food and agricultural perspective. And these in brief relate to irrigated agriculture.

A very large percentage of available water, up to 70 percent, is used for irrigation in the developing world. So water for this purpose is an important economic resource. Contaminated irrigation water is a significant source of unsafe water. It comprises an important human exposure pathway, primarily because of crop up-take of waterborne contaminants, but also because of direct contact of humans in the course of agricultural activities.

And irrigated related agriculture and provision of safe water for this purpose is not discussed in the context of this Act.

So the recommendation is that it be considered in strategy development and recommendations under the act and that it will involve improved environmental and water resource management for environmental purposes, specifically agriculture.

That said, I would like to add my own observations, which we could confirm some of the observations from other people at this meeting. One is that there needs to be more cross-sectoral involvement. And national and international organizations that focus on public health and disease prevention and management, such as WHO and UNICEF, need to partner more frequently with organizations that are involved with agricultural and environmental resource management, such as FAO and other NGOs such as Cegar (ph) out of the University of Liverpool .

And the sectors are likely to be more productive and less redundant if this occurs.

And second, several other people have stated this, local involvement is essential in developing countries. People, even those who are very poor, know what they need. And their involvement and buy-in in conjunction with some outside expertise helps to ensure sustainability in the context of the resources available to the people.

And it is reminiscent of the old saying, give a man a fish and he will eat for one day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.

And finally, I think at the other end, Americans need to be educated about the importance of these issues with regard to our own national security and our own economic sustainability, in order to ensure that in the long term sufficient financing is available for these efforts. Thank you.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you. I'm here representing the Center For Strategic and International Studies. We're a nonpartisan, nonprofit, foreign policy think tank here in Washington .

About a year and a half ago, CSIS entered into a partnership with Sandia National Laboratories to identify the best policy and technology solutions available for addressing global water challenges. I would like to share a few of those conclusions with you today.

I would just like to reiterate though, that these are my own thoughts on behalf of CSIS, and in no way represents Sandia National Laboratories.

One of our conclusions was that insufficient attention has been paid to the broader strategic importance of water - he point that Geoff had mentioned earlier. That water cannot just be -- global water challenges cannot just be seen as human health priorities. There are also geopolitical and economic implications to them as well.

Second, we found that insufficient resources, both human and financial were being devoted to addressing global water challenges. Those resource that have been dedicated are concentrated and are not reaching the regions of the greatest need.

So moving forward we think that a reallocation of resources, or at least a re-visitation of the resources that we have available is merited.

And then thirdly, that we have seen an insufficient coordination between the agencies of the U.S. Government. Mechanisms within certain agencies are in place but we haven't seen quite as much of a break through across agencies.

This legislation and the proceedings here today, we think represent a key point. There are great many opportunities for the U.S. Government to leverage water to support many of our interests and foreign policy goals oversees.

One of these opportunities is the wide range of technologies available. We have heard a lot of them commented on today. Everything from the low-tech clay pots, the PUR Sachets that can produce drinkable water at the very local or point-of-use level. All the way up to advances in reverse osmosis and desalination.

Second, there is an opportunity in the great diversity of organizations that are ready, willing and able to help. Again we heard from a lot of them today. There is a great many academic institutions, non-governmental organizations and even the private sector has been stepping in this field.

Finally, there is an opportunity for the U.S. Government to operate at many different levels. At the local level, community-based solutions are proven sustainable method for bringing safe drinking water to people. These community-based solutions promote governance, transparency, participatory institutions, that could all be seen as precursors to democratic development.

At the higher levels, international levels, pushing for regional and bilateral cooperative frameworks would promote peace and stability in key regions to the United States ' interest.

So there are a great many opportunities that are available. The key is creating differentiated strategies linking the most -- the best solutions for the specifics of each situation and each region, country or locality across the world.

At CSIS, we're going to continue doing our part over the next two years. We're going to be continuing to look on a region by region basis the best technology and policy solutions. And we would like to continue doing our part in informing and helping the U.S. Government and other organizations in any way that we can.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you. Secretary McMurray and the other representatives of the State Department, and representatives of US Agency For International Development. I'm the Executive Director of Global Environmental Management Initiative. We call it GEMI, G-E-M-I.

I'm here today to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act town hall meeting and commend you for reaching out to the wide a wide range of constituents regarding ways to provide affordable and equitable access to safe water and sanitation in the developing countries.

GEMI is an organization of 42 member companies, represent 22 business sectors with annual sales of more than $915 billion US, more than 2.5 million employees and over three thousand facilities globally.

Since 1990 GEMI has been committed to businesses helping businesses, improving environmental health and safety performance and corporate citizenship.

GEMI members work toward this commitment. Through their development of tools that are created and utilized by the membership and are available for free around the world through GEMI's web site at www.GEMI.org . GEMI has developed a series of tools that focus on water and have a wide range of potential for use of developing countries. One of those, “Fostering Environmental Prosperity”, is a tool that through economic and case study reports shows that multi-national corporations are positive forces for both economic development and environmental health and safety quality in the developing countries in which they operate.

And that report case study highlighted how Anheuser Busch, DuPont, the Coca-Cola Company, Eastman Kodak Company, Motorola, Procter and Gamble Company and Occidental Petroleum Corporation, have instituted activities impacting water related issues and economic development opportunities in developing countries.

“Connecting the Drops Toward a Creative Water Strategy”, a water sustainability tool, was developed to help an organization better understand how to identify water-related opportunities and risk, determine the best the business case for action, engage in organization, and implement an effective global water strategy.

In that tool, case studies relating to water were included from Anheuser Busch, the Procter and Gamble Company, Texas Instruments, the Coca-Cola Company, DuPont, Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Conagra Foods, Eastman Kodak Company, Johnson Controls, Southern Company, Georgia Pacific Corporation, Intel Corporation and the Novartis Corporation.

In other words, there is a lot that's being done by the private sector. And I applaud the other folks that were talking today about PUR and the good work that's been done by Procter and Gamble, because there is an awfully lot of good work that's being done in the private sector with regard to these technologies.

In addition GEMI is now developing and should have available about early next by early next year a new water sustainability tool that will provide tactical information and approaches that plant managers can utilize to address water-related challenges and opportunities.

GEMI has, and will continue to develop tools that can be utilized in developing countries to address a wide range of corporate citizenship activities including water and sanitation issues and economic opportunities in developing countries.

A specific recommendation for your consideration would be that, while GEMI has a wide range of tools that can be utilized around the world, we now have about 30 of them, particularly in developing countries, we have not had a relationship with an organization that could translate and distribute the tools in those developing countries.

GEMI would welcome the opportunity to work with the State Department and USAID to translate GEMI's tools so that they could be utilized in developing countries and to develop a distribution system that would get the tools in the hands of those who most could most effectively utilize them.

We thank all of you. In fact, I'm very impressed with the amount of time that people have been up today that everybody is staying. Usually the audience would be empty by now so there are a lot of committed people sitting here.

We really appreciate the opportunity to share our thoughts with you and of course look forward to working with you on these important issues. Thank you.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: I'm with a new group called International Action. I spent 30 years with another nonprofit called the International Center , which Arch Chemicals talked about our project in Central America , putting chlorine systems into small towns in all over Honduras .

What it demonstrated was that you could do anything in Honduras and nobody would notice. We were trying to bring about a real innovation in water treatment. Again we did it for 10 years in Honduras . The project is still going on. We have expanded to many villages and nobody has noticed.

You are a roomful of people whom we would like to convince that the technology that we use and the approach that we use is a real change in how to treat water in rural areas with chlorine. It is called a tablet chlorinator. There are several companies that make them. One is a Norweco in Norwalk Ohio .

We have sort of switched auspices to try to buy and find a better venue to display this technology. So we have moved to the Dominican Republic and Haiti .

I'll give you a couple of numbers. I have actually started going to Haiti .

If you compare the life span between the two countries, Dominicans live to be 72-year old. Haitians live to be 52-year old. Suggest the difference.

And I think water is a primary thing. Another fact you wish wasn't true about Haiti is that the municipal system in Port Au Prince, a city of two million, maybe three million, nobody counts them anymore, has totally broken down. And the neighborhoods are building water towers, and in fact, whole neighborhoods like Cite Soleil have been turned over to nonprofits. The government has disappeared and they are a group of NGOs running what passes for government there.

And we're making a set of deals to give them chlorinators because they don't chlorinate the water, which is contaminated even in Port Au Prince.

I sent to maybe 50, maybe 100 NGOs that work in Haiti and offered to give them free chlorinators and a year's supply of chlorine.

If they would install in the village where they work these chlorinators, I sort of hope that Catholic Relief and World Vision and a couple of these big guns would notice this e-mail offer, because we'll go bankrupt to try and supply all these chlorinators.

But in any case, I will wait by the door. Anybody who wants free chlorinators for a program they are running in Haiti , we would be happy to supply them.

We'll be lobbying on the hill that more money go to Haiti . There are no public sanitation facilities anywhere in Haiti . Even in the big cities. It is unbelievable. Incomprehensible.

In any case, we would like to change your minds and introduce a technology. We would like you guys to carry it out in other countries. So we're a bit of a zealot on this subject. I'll wait by the door and give me your business cards and we'll be happy to pedal our chlorinators for free.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you very much. I'm the president of Africare, which is an NGO organization working on the continent of Africa . Currently, we're working in some 25 countries in Africa and have been working for some 35 years on the African continent.

One thing that we found from this experience is that water is arguably the most important natural resource necessary for human survival. Our field staff is working in villages have always found that water was ranked near the top of the list of livelihood priorities.

Since first helping Sahelians to construct wide-diameter wells during the drought of the early 1970s, Africare has worked in thousands of African communities to ensure reliable sources of water.

Most of these efforts have involved shell, hand-dug wells. However, we have also been involved in constructing earthen dams, built irrigation schemes, protected natural springs and experimented with rainwater harvesting techniques.

In addition we have found that it is important to integrate sanitation into water programs.

Let me just briefly summarize what have been some of the lessons that we have learned from all of this experience. We found that there is a need for community involvement, which was sorely lacking in earlier well and water construction projects that we have participated in.

We also recognize that if you look back in the 1970s and the 1980s, many African governments continue to assume full responsibility for building and maintaining wells, bore holes, dams and other water facilities.

Villagers typically were unwilling to expend much labor or to maintain water points that had been given to them without requiring their substantial involvement in community contribution.

They waited usually in vain for local and central governments to fix pumps and to deepen existing wells.

Only in recent years have people come to appreciate the limitations of government, and communities have begun to get engaged in self-help and in maintenance of these wells and dams.

We have also come to believe that, once communities understand that the link between water and health is important, they are more committed to the maintenance of water points.

We believe that it is necessary to invest greater effort in community mobilization and that communities can learn the essential relationship between good sanitation- hygiene - before work commences on water points.

As a result, we believe community structures and training villagers are capable of maintaining a well, a pump or a dam without help from the government, and they are able to educate and monitor fellow community members on the proper use of a water facility.

We in Africare believe that this is an important town hall meeting, and look forward to working with faith-based organizations, through the government, with private sector organizations and with other NGOs in helping to moat safe and potable water for the continent of Africa and for the rest of the world.

Thank you for this opportunity.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: I will try to touch on a few points that kind of overarch our discussion.

First, many thanks for this excellent town forum.

I believe that since we're now almost 34 years after -- almost 36 years after Earth Day, 34 years after the first Global and Human Environment Conference at Stockholm and 14 years after the Earth Summit at Rio, I think it is unforgivable that in practice, in reality, the right to safe, clean drinking water is not a basic human right and a practical reality for every citizen of the earth.

Having touched upon that, I want to just emphasize three ways in which this may be done.

First, I don't believe there is any lack of technology, and we have heard a lot of that today. And certainly there are no lack of programs, public and private.

And lastly, a controversial point perhaps, but I don't believe there is any basic lack of resources of funding - bilateral and multilateral - from the United States and other countries.

It comes back to what some of the other speakers have talked about: lack of priority and emphasis on clean safe drinking water. I think it is beyond the focus of this forum. I believe time has passed. It is long overdue for a review of our overall aid program, USAID program to find out -- for example, I'm not against defense for any country that needs to be defended, but we need to see why are we in some cases actually funding arms races between nations that are at peace, have inside peace treaties.

I think we need to look at that. We need to say if the United States with budget priority is not going to provide more aid.

Secondly, in much of today's discussion we've rightly focused upon the need for clean safe community drinking water. Provide that. But I think we must not separate this point of water quality and provision from the overall point of supply of water.

It has been mentioned that we need to look at basins. We need to look at regions. I would say we need to look at even transfers between basins. That's been another third rail or hot point for a long time. But I think that with proper environmental assessments at the point of origin and at the point of delivery of the water the technology exists today to transfer a small percentage of the water from water rich areas to drought areas. And in the Middle East where I tend to focus in our middle miracle, a little bit of water from Turkey could make a big difference in some other regions such as parts of Israel, West Bank and Gaza and so forth.

In the United States , in North America, a proposal has been made to take one, two or three days of water of the provision of the Nelson River in Canada to supply our northwest region. These are not new proposals, but I think they need to be looked at again, as I say, with proper environmental assessments at both ends to see what the impacts are.

Third, I believe that the provision of safe drinking water does not need to wait for conflict resolution, but a precursor to settlement of wars, low level conflicts and terrorism. And I think that all of our eight programs and the State Department conflict resolution programs need to have a provision of safe clean drinking water as an integral part of the program from the outset.

I offer one small unnoticed and unpublicized example of where safe clean drinking water has been provided in the midst of the world. In this I refer to Israel which is by definition a water short nation that uses more than 100 percent of its available water each year. And yet it has provided as part of a peace treaty with Jordan 50 cubic meters a year to Jordan which may or may not be more water-short than Israel herself.

Secondly, Israel has provided safe clean drinking water to Gaza to the very day to help prevent further depletion of Gaza aquifer, salt water intrusion, and much of the safe clean drinking water for today's West Bank .

And lastly, Israel still provides safe, clean drinking water to South Lebanon for the communities there five years after Israel 's withdrawal from South Lebanon and the demarcation of that border by the United Nations.

So I offer that as a hopeful sign that we can have the provision of safe, clean, drinking water as a basic human right even before conflicts are finally resolved. And I thank you.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

COMMENT: Thank you, Jonathan.

I'm from TCG International. We're a group of advisors on development finance.

And it seems to me that the act that we're discussing today is really a challenge to the State Department and to USAID and to, in fact, all of the U.S. government agencies working on water to get beyond simply doing more of the same.

And I think it is important that we keep in mind that there is probably not going to be a whole lot more money available, even though it would be nice if there were.

So the real issue comes down to how do we focus, and that has to be the strategic decision-making that you do, how do you focus the funding you already have, specifically, on increasing the access of the poor to water and sanitation on a sustainable basis.

In other words, AID does a lot of wonderful things in the water field, and I'm sure that the other agencies do as well, I'm not as familiar with them, but, frankly, very little of that, and I mean really very little of that, is truly focused on increasing the access of the poor to water on a sustainable basis.

That's what your strategy needs to deal with.

You have to make that the benchmark of water and sanitation programming in the USG.

You really need to require certification as to the number of poor who are going to get access as a result of water and sanitation programs either before or after the implementation of those programs.

My second point is that we also need to increase the emphasis on helping to mobilize local, private capital for the expansion of access to the poor.

There are models within USAID which are extremely successful. In particular, I note the program in India , which has been using municipal bonds and bond pooling as a means of providing local financing, not U.S. government grants, but ruby investments by Indian investors in the water supply systems that are going to expand to meet the needs of the poor.

The strategy needs to think about how to reward USAID field missions and other agencies for replicating those kinds of successes, taking it beyond what they have done so far in India and looking at ways to do it in countries where you have much more challenging financial situations.

But I think that the real key here is that the strategy has to focus on the poor, how to improve their access to water and sanitation as the primary objective.

Not that the other things aren't important, aren't necessary, they all are, but this act really requires a much clearer focus and moving additional resources within the limited envelope you have to focus on those issues.

Thank you.

MR. MARGOLIS: Thank you.

That concludes our speaker list.

With your indulgence, I will try to very briefly summarize what I know I have heard today. It by no means represents, I think, the richness of the discussions that we heard. Because any attempt to do that by one person will necessarily fall short. But bear with me if you will.

I want to make essentially just seven broad categories of ideas and thoughts and comments that we heard.

First, cross linkages. A lot of discussion about the water issues underlying a whole range of other issues, health, education, environment, agriculture, development and, of course, security.

The second point, governance. There are two aspects to governance.

First, the level of governance. Quite a bit of focus on local level activities - hat we need to take into account what we're doing at a local level. But also simultaneously at the regional level, basin level and even international level. That's the level of engagement that we're talking about.

But also there is another component to governance. And that has to do with the transparency of institutions that we are dealing with, how accountable they are and whether they are bringing forward results that we can actually measure. So the whole question of metrics came up.

Third, financing. A focus on providing the resources that are necessary, recognition that those resources won't come only from governments, but, in fact, a lot of the resources are going to be locally provided, locally driven, and that there has to be cost recovery. Where the recovery comes from, a lot of views on that, but that there must be cost recovery.

Fourth, partnerships. That no one entity represented by anybody around these tables can do this alone. We have heard from NGOs, from business, from faith groups, from any number of sources who want to play a role as we go forward.

Fifth, the role of technology. We heard some specific technologies mentioned that could be useful. We heard about the role of science, science and decision making, and science as playing a role in coming up with the right solutions for the water sector.

Sixth, some ideas related to best practices. Some specific examples. We heard about specific programs and activities that any number of organizations have underway. How they can be replicated. How the information can be distributed more broadly so that those that need that information, those that need the examples and the best practices, how they can use them.

And then seventh, leadership. Quite a bit of call for raising the political awareness, political will and specifically what the U.S. role is in moving these issues forward, and how the U.S. government providing this leadership can focus its efforts with the resources that it has on the activities that need to go forward.

I thank you very much for all of your comments. Obviously, as you can tell, we took, I think you will all agree, quite a bit away from this. I hope you did as well.

Let me thank you for two things if I could. One, in my experience, I have worked quite a bit in the United Nations. We have a 3-minute rule in the United Nations. And if we could replicate the enforcement of that as well as you all did here on your own, I can assure you the UN would become a much more efficient organization.

I really applaud you today for keeping to the time limit and allowing everyone who wanted to speak to have a chance to do so. It is a very welcome thing.

Second, I want to commend you all on the respect and general positive will that you all showed towards one another. There is a tremendous amount of expertise and talent in this room. Some of it represented by non-governmental agencies, some of it represented by governments as well.

And the ability of us I think here to talk together about how we will go forward I think that's the right message. That's certainly in keeping with what the law and the Hill guidance would like us to do. So I really applaud you for that.

Let me close if I could by just recognizing the other agencies that are represented around the room and thank AID for joining me here on the podium. They will, of course, be working hand and glove with the State Department as we go forward.

And there are a range of government agencies, Claudia McMurray mentioned we have an interagency team already set up to work on this very important issue. A number of those agencies are present here today to listen to your comments, EPA, NOAA, U.S. Geological Survey, Army Corps of Engineers, a number of others that I haven't mentioned but they are here as well, so let me thank them for their participation.

Thank you for coming. We appreciate your comments.

(Thereupon, the meeting concluded at 3 p.m.)