Gateses invest $17 million to give the poor clean water

Clean water. At least a billion people on Earth today can't get it.

"This is an enormous, unmet need worldwide," said Glenn Austin, leader of a $17 million project spearheaded by Seattle-based PATH and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Expected to be launched first in India, the five-year PATH project will explore how best to expand the use of household water purification methods such as filtration or chemicals in poor communities.

Safe drinking water is one of the most basic needs of humanity, Austin said, but one out of every six people on the planet still lacks access to it -- which feeds into a cycle of economic deprivation, environmental degradation, illness and death.

[Excerpt of an article by Tom Paulson, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer]