By Mallory Clarkson/London Community News

Keep it simple and straightforward. While there are a couple variations of the KISS acronym, for Bob Dell, the message remains the same: The more complex you make something, the less effective it becomes.

That was the approach he took to finding a manageable way to purify water in Uganda, which he explained during a City Symposium held at London Public Library’s central branch on Wednesday (Jan. 18).

The symposium is a monthly event where inspiring speakers, artists and innovators in London share their projects and ideas.

Dell, a water scientist with around 30 years of experience, talked to the crowd who came out to January’s symposium about a project started in Uganda in 2004.

“There’s a big problem that continues in our world today, a very big problem, and that is that thousands upon thousands of children and women everyday walk kilometers and kilometers to get their drinking water,” Dell told the nearly 100 people sitting in the Wolf Performance Hall at the London Public Library central branch.

It’s not just that the rivers, ponds and lakes used as sources of water are far, but that they’re bacteria-ridden too. Dell noted where the water is collected is the same spot where cattle and other animals graze.

“But the children scoop it out, walk it miles back home, drink it, get very sick and die,” he said.

What Dell and his team came up with was simple, straightforward. Using to ingredients the country had an abundance of: Plastic water bottles and sunshine.

“We came across something back in 2003, called SODIS or solar disinfection,” Dell explained, adding it was developed at the University of Beirut in Lebanon in the early 1980s. “He found that when you put water out in the sun, the rays of the sun were powerful enough to destroy the bacteria in the water.”

This process is unlike other “fancy” award-winning solutions Dell described during his presentation.

The first was a filtered straw that people could use to draw up water. Dell explained the problem with this device is not only would people be leaning down like animals to draw water up through the straw, but sediment would quickly clog it.

The other two devices were a water wheel (like a front-lawn roller) and a bicycle that you would put water into and as you peddled, the water would purify. The problem with these two contraptions is that the terrain is rocky and steep. It would be nearly impossible to get either device to some watering holes.

Before rolling out the solar disinfection solution, Dell tweaked the process, which at the time included painting the bottles half black to attract the sun and shaking the bottle to get oxygen into the water.

But Dell and his team found those two variables weren’t necessary during studies, thus simplifying the process further.

“The E. Coli was gone, there was no bacteria left,” he said. “These kids were drinking 14,000 E. Coli in their drinking water when we first got involved.”

Because it’s not the sun’s heat that kills almost all bacteria, viruses and parasites in the water, but rather the ultra violet (UV) rays, and enough oxygen is incorporated to the water when it’s poured into the bottle, Dell explained the process became much easier.

“So the process became take the dirty water, put it in the bottle put it into the sun for a day and drink it the next day,” he said.

“So we started to teach the mothers first how to do this, and then we taught the children at the schools how to do this and set up programs where it became an integral part of the learning process.”

Dell added the process works even on a cloudy day, it just takes two days to purify the water.

He noted the program has grown.

“We had it go into the communities and they started to do it on a community level and we wound up with a lot of very happy kids that weren’t getting diarrhea every day and weren’t getting sick every day, and were going to school every day,” he said.

“The end result of five-six years of work in Uganda is 300,000 children are now drinking clean water — simply and affordably — just by putting it in a bottle, putting it out in the sun for one day, taking it and drinking it.”

Since it’s implementation, the area has seen a 77 per cent reduction in dysentery cases in its clinics.

Dysentery is a potentially fatal disorder of the intestine and colon that can result in diarrhea, a fever and abdominal pain. Bacteria in water can contribute to this disorder.

The area has also seen an up to 25 per cent increase in school attendance.

“Take away all of those complexities that really don’t work and beyond what you need to do to solve the problem,” he said. “When you try to solve a problem, each step in making it more complex decreases the chance of it being successful.”

This approach sparked the creation of Water School, a registered charity that was founded in 2007. Dell is the president of that organization.

Now the sustainable approach to clean water is being implemented in other countries like Kenya, Haiti and the Sudan.

For more information on the Water School, check out its website at www.waterschool.com.