Interview with Tara Blasco and Lyn Hebenstreit
of Global Resource Alliance in Tanzania
on Sustainable World Radio, KCSB 91.9 FM PST
also streaming live on www.kcsb.org, interviews posted later on www.sustainableworldradio.com
Lyn Hebenstreit
Lyn founded Global Resource Alliance (GRA) in April, 2002 after being invited to work as a volunteer finance and accounting consultant for Foundation HELP, Tanzania - a small NGO on the shores of Lake Victoria. Prior to that, he owned and operated an industrial sewing machine company, served as Chief Financial Officer for a manufacturing firm and, for the past 15 years, has served as an accounting and database consultant for many small businesses and non-profit organizations in Ojai, California.
Tara María Blasco
Tara coordinates GRA programs related to alternative health, malaria prevention, education and orphans support and has been involved with the organization as a volunteer since 2003 and has served on the Board of Directors since 2004.
She holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a specialty in prenatal and birth psychology from Santa Barbara Graduate Institute
Presently, Tara lives in California with her husband Lyn Hebenstreit and co-directs the Ojai Wisdom Center.
Water Resource Development: Primary Water
Water is essential to overcoming hunger, poverty and disease, yet worldwide, more than one billion people still lack access to safe drinking water. Five million people, mostly children, die each year from water-borne diseases - double the number of deaths caused by AIDS. Some 60% of all infant mortality is linked to infectious and parasitic diseases, most of them water-related.
In December 2003, the UN General Assembly proclaimed the years 2005 - 2015 to be the International Decade for Action, "Water for Life" - an international drive to bring safe water and basic sanitation to communities around the world. The goal set by the UN Millennium Project is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
GRA has responded to the call by initiating a bold and unconventional water resource development project called "Maji Mengi" (Abundant Water). Utilizing innovative techniques developed by the late Stephan Riess, of Ojai, CA, we will begin drilling boreholes and developing wells in communities throughout the Mara region of Tanzania suffering from severe water shortages. The project's leader, Pal Pauer, is a protégée of Riess with over thirty years experience locating and tapping the abundant, crystalline water found in fractured primary rock.
Kinesi, a village of 5,000 residents in the Tarime district of Tanzania, will be the first site developed beginning September, 2007. Residents presently use polluted, untreated water from Lake Victoria for drinking, bathing, cooking, irrigation and laundry. Clean, safe water will not only dramatically reduce the incidence of cholera, typhoid, dysentery, schistosomaisis and other parasitic infections, but also demonstrate the potential of "earth generated" water to enhance the quality of life in communities currently without access to safe sources of water.
More About Primary Water
Primary water is created within the Earth's interior and travels toward the surface via fissures and fractures in primary rock. It is accessed by drilling directly into bedrock, often at depths of just 150 to 300 feet. Also referred to as new, juvenile, or earth-generated water, discussions of primary water can be found in modern literature, although it is not generally recognized by the hydrological community. It's potential to ameliorate the world's growing water crisis remains largely unrealized.
Evidence of primary water comes from a variety of sources. Natural springs, for instance, can be found throughout the world that have been producing thousands of gallons of pure, fresh water per minute continuously since biblical times. Many of these, like the Fountain of Apollo in Libya and the Ain Feigh in Syria, have seeded civilizations. Others, like the giant spring gushing from solid granite in Kings Canyon National Park, are merely wonders of nature.
In addition to these naturally occurring springs, primary water is often encountered accidentally when tunneling through rock for mines, roadways or waterways - even at high elevations, far above any drainage basin. The famous Comstock silver mine on the Eastern slope of Mt. Davidson near Nevada City, for example, pumped over 5 million gallons a day out of flooded mineshafts until the pumps failed and the mine was closed in 1886. In the 1950's water was struck tunneling through the Santa Ynez Mountains in Santa Barbara that flowed at over 13 million gallons a day. Construction was halted until the gushing fissure could be sealed.
Many castles in Europe, built hundreds of years ago on high rocky promontories, have wells hand hewn in solid rock that have been producing fresh, pure water non-stop for centuries. More recently, in the past ten years, exploration projects in Sudan, Somalia and the West Indies islands of Trinidad and Tobago have successfully tapped the abundant water locked in fractured bedrock. By defying conventional hydrological wisdom, an innovative engineering company was able to obtain yields of up to 50 times that estimated by the "experts", at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives.
Utilizing techniques perfected over many decades of experience, GRA's primary water project will demonstrate practical, economical approaches to locating and tapping the Earth's abundant water to meet the needs of communities suffering from severe water shortages.
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