Aqwalife, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing safe drinking water, collaborated with another NGO called Haritika to install a reverse osmosis water treatment plant in Chandanpura village in Madhya Pradesh, India. The village of 300 people previously relied on contaminated groundwater sources. The new plant draws water from a borewell, treats it using iron removal media and RO, and provides 600 liters of clean drinking water per hour. Local committees were formed to maintain the plant and ensure its long-term sustainability. Since the plant was installed, villagers' health and productivity has improved as they now have reliable access to safe water.

1. 26 EverythingAboutWater | September 2014 www.eawater.com/eMagazine
DRINKING WATER
Aqwalife is providing drinking water solution to Chandanpura in
Madhya Pradesh, home to 300 people.
By Shamita Sengupta
DRINKING
WATER PROJECT
IN
MADHYA
PRADESH
BY
AQWALIFE
Figure 1: Villagers Getting Water Earlier

2. 27www.eawater.com/eMagazine September 2014 | EverythingAboutWater
Keywords: Water Supply, RO Plant, Iron Removal Media
Introduction
About Aqwalife: Aqwalife (www.aqwalife.org) is
the registered nonprofit organization of Aquatech,
dedicated to providing and facilitating the access
to safe drinking water in underprivileged areas.
Haritika (www.haritika.org) is an NGO which
works in the parched Bundelkhand regions of
UP and MP in environment preservation, water
conservation and social issues. With a vision
of a healthy and democratic Bundelkhand free
from hunger, poverty, environmental degradation
and all forms of exploitation, Haritika has been
working in this area since 1994.
Haritika is actively involved in promoting dignity
and gender equity and trying to improve the
standard of living of economically and socially
deprived people, by making them self-reliant
through interventions in natural resource
management, water & sanitation, health and
livelihood opportunities.
Aqwalife has collaborated with Haritika to provide
a long term drinking water solution to a tribal
village, Chandanpura in Madhya Pradesh, home
to 300 people.
The Background
Chandanpura is a small village in the Bijawar
block of Madhya Pradesh. It falls under the rain
scarce drought prone area of Bundelkhand. The
villagers were dependent on the rains to take care
of their water needs, and extracted water from the
local streams for domestic and irrigation needs
during the monsoon. However, the streams are
only seasonal and the respite was short lived.
Villagers Getting Water Earlier
Traditionally, they used dug wells to meet their
water demands; there was only 1 dug well and
three hand-pumps in the village. The water of
this village was highly contaminated with iron.
The depth required to dig for water was also
increasing over time.
To provide a solution to this problem, Haritika
identified a perennial water source in a bore well.
Based on the hydrogeology of the river basin, it
was found that bore wells are more suitable to
meeting water needs as compared to tube wells
that exhaust aquifers. The water from the well is
pumped and stored into an overhead reservoir
tank, built at the highest point in the village. An
efficient underground pipeline system then relays
the water to each household.
However, it was found that the bore well water
was very hard and had high levels of iron, thereby
increasing the risk of certain illnesses. To soften
and purify the hard ground water for drinking
purposes, Haritika approached Aqwalife for
support, based on Aqwalife’s long experience
in solving difficult drinking water issues. After a
study of the water and site requirements, Aqwalife
agreed to provide a 600 LPH RO plant to this
tribal village.
The Challenges & Solutions
As Aqwalife took on this project, it faced a number
of logistical and technical challenges.To start with,
there was no structure in the village to house the
RO plant. Aqwalife requested Haritika to construct
a pucca room where the plant could be installed.
This task took a couple of months at the beginning
of the project.
RO Plant Room in Village
Next, there was the problem of irregular electricity
supply to run the plant. With Aqwalife’s technical
support, Haritika arranged for solar panels to
be installed on the roof of the RO plant room.
Aqwalife then designed an RO plant that could be
run on solar panel power. The biggest technical
challenge was the presence of iron in the ground
water. Standard RO plants meant for bore-
well water do not necessarily remove iron. The
Aqwalife team then designed a plant with iron-
removal media to overcome this problem.
The team designed an RO plant with an output of
600 liters per hour, to be run 10 hours a day. The
treatment scheme was:
Figure 2: Under Construction Pump House with RO Panels Figure 3: RO Plant Room in Village

3. 28 September 2014 | EverythingAboutWater www.eawater.com/eMagazine
DRINKING WATER
 Pre-filtration, including iron-removal media, followed by
 Reverse Osmosis (RO) and
 Ultra Violet (UV) disinfection
Pre-Treatment Process
The iron removal media chosen was DMI-65, which is extensively used to treat
iron and manganese in water. The micro-porous structure of the media makes
it efficient in removing iron and manganese compounds as well as potassium
permanganate.
It also operateswell at linearfiltrationvelocities up to twice that ofconventional
media. It acts as an oxidation catalyst allowing immediate oxidation and
precipitation of the insoluble precipitate.
Moreover, this media does not get consumed in the plant operation, giving it
a long life and avoiding the cost of reactivation, which is very significant given
the remote rural location. Only an initial activation of sodium hypochlorite is
required.
RO Process Description
 The raw water is collected in a tank and pumped up to a pressure multi-
media filter (MMF).
 The MMF removes finer suspended solids and other physical
contaminants.
Figure 6: Treatment Scheme
Raw Water
Iron pH Turbidity TDS Total Coliform
Max 5 ppm 6.5 - 8.5 10 NTU <2000 mg/ltr TNTC
Treated Water
Iron pH Turbidity TDS Total Coliform
Max 0.3 ppm 6.5 - 8.5 < 1 NTU 200 mg/ltr Nil
Figure 5: Product Designed for Raw Water Quality and
Treated Water Quality
Figure 4
 The filtered water is passed through an activated carbon filter to remove
color, organics, taste and odor.
 The water is further filtered through micron cartridge filters.
 The treated water is then passed through RO membranes to eliminate
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), bacteria, and pathogens.
 The RO water is finally fed to a UV sterilizer for disinfection.
Maintenance and Sustainability
Unlike industrial projects, this project is in a remote tribal village with no
infrastructural support or trained manpower. Hence maintaining and getting
the benefits of the provided technology was a prime concern.
At the outset, Aqwalife had entered into a Memorandum Of Understanding
with Haritika on maintaining the plant; the NGO had formed a Village Water &
Sanitation Committee (VWSC) comprising Panchayat members, lower caste
representatives and women’s groups, to take responsibility for operating and
maintaining the plant.
This committee formed a corpus fund with a contribution of Rs. 1000
from each household in the village. The interest from this corpus is used to
maintain the plant and equipment.
In addition, a monthly user charge per household is collected to pay for the
wear and tear and operator charges. In order to ensure effective and optimum
functioning of the system, a local responsible person has been appointed the

4. 29www.eawater.com/eMagazine September 2014 | EverythingAboutWater
Keywords: Water Supply, RO Plant, Iron Removal Media
Figure 7: RO Plant After it
Was Commissioned
Figure 9: Villagers Line Up at the Water Outlet
Outside the Plant Room.
Figure 8: RO Plant After it Was Commissioned
Figure 10: Villagers Line Up at the Water Outlet
Outside the Plant Room.
About the Author
Shamita Sengupta works as Manager Corporate Social Responsibility in Aquatech
Systems (Asia) Pvt Ltd. Shamita develops and executes CSR projects for Aquatech’s
non-profit foundation Aqwalife.
Aqwalife is the registered nonprofit organization of Aquatech, dedicated to providing
and facilitating the access to safe drinking water in underprivileged areas.
Aquatech is headquartered in Pennsylvania, USA. It is dedicated to bringing valuable
and innovative solutions and water reuse practices.
To know more about the author, you can write to us. Your feedback is welcome and
should be sent at: mayur@eawater.com. Published letters in each issue will get a one-
year complimentary subscription of EverythingAboutWater Magazine.
diseases among the children. The villagers’ medical bills were also reduced,
especially as the incidences of diarrhea went down considerably. There were
far fewer disputes related to water collection and distribution.
Learning
 This program has proved that even high-specification technology can
be maintained and sustained in a tribal rural environment, provided that
the local populace is empowered to take responsibility for it once they
perceive the manifold benefits that technology can bring.
 The present program also indicates that the drinking water crisis cannot
be addressed in isolation. Broader issues of source sustainability, water
quality, and sanitation must be taken into account. The present project
reaffirms the belief that assured water supply can lead towards better
usage and improved sanitation and hygiene, leading to improved
maternal and community health.
This has been one more example of how Aquatech’s expertise in industrial
treatment of water and wastewater has been harnessed to benefit a poor and
marginalized community where negligible help reaches. Aquatech’s social
interventions through Aqwalife have improved drinking water access to many
such communities in India and abroad. www.aquatech.com
task of managing the pump house and ensuring water is pumped into the
tank and then into the RO plant on a daily basis.
Results after the Commission of RO Plant
After the pucca room had been constructed and the solar panels fixed,
Aqwalife delivered and installed the RO plant in the village and commissioned
it successfully. The water was then tested for potability and found to be of
good quality. Subsequently, Haritika has intensively monitored the results/
benefits of purified drinking water in this rural environment.
MeasurableResultsinbothHealthandSocialIndicators
Collection of water is one of the most repetitive, physically demanding and
time-consuming tasks. With the convenient availability of clean drinking
water, much of the time saved in collecting water is spent on other productive
activities, including economic opportunities.
Health impacts specific to women include: a reduction in genito-urinary
infections, reduced incidence of back pain caused by carrying water over
long distances, reduced mental stress caused by anxiety over distribution of
limited fresh water, and caring for sick infants.
It was observed that school attendance of children increased. This was a
result of less time spent by girls in collecting water, and also less water-borne