DROUGHT - WHAT DROUGHT?

Globally 1 billion people lack access to clean potable water. As such I was amazed to hear yesterday that the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson which arrived off the coast of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti on 15th January has four distilling units which can make 400,000 U.S. gallons (1,500 m³) of potable water a day.

Bearing in mind that within the Nimitz class alone there are:- the Nimitz, the Dwight D Eisenhower, the Theodore Roosevelt, the Abraham Lincoln, the George Washington, the John C Stennis, the Harry S Truman, the Ronald Reagan and the George H W Bush in addition to the Carl Vinson, forgetting the ships other capabilities, that’s an ability to make 4 million U.S. gallons of potable water a day.

Well done to the United States for their quick and generous reaction in Haiti but what a shame that as far as the global community is concerned, it all depends upon how bad a disaster your poor backward country’s had as to whether you get the technology parking off your coast let alone the money to build a shore based plant.

I now better understand that globally, 1 billion people merely lack the aid to give them access to clean potable water.