Sparks company ships its purification units to Iraq

Water Security Corp.

of Sparks made its first delivery of water purification systems to Concern for Kids in Northern Iraq.

The aid group has targeted 140 villages for new water systems.With assistance from the U.S.

military, a pickup truck will run a regular delivery route to service 10 villages with the mobile purification system, says Ken Kearney, vice president of sales and marketing for the Sparks company.

Water Security commercialized the patented water purification technology package originally developed for use in the NASA Manned Space program in the late 1970s.

The technology uses an iodinated resin that filters out particulates, pesticides, herbicides, bacteria, viruses, giardia, and iodine species.

The devices are sized to serve customers ranging from a single family to an entire village.

They have no moving parts and require no maintenance or electricity.

Each size is named for a NASA space mission: Discovery, Endeavour,Apollo and Atlantis.

The company marketing system is suitable for everything from restaurants to rural water systems, from construction sites to military bases.

A commercial product is made for homeowners in countries throughout Asia.

The privately-held company incorporated and began selling the product this year, says Kearney.

Initial sales are for overseas use.

The product can't be sold in the U.S.

until after approval by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is expected next year, says Kearney.

But the overseas market is huge: over two billion people do not have access to safe drinking water.

That could keep the company busy for now.More than 140 villages in northern Iraq suffer from contaminated wells which threaten the health of the local populace, said Ray Doane, president.

Enemies of the Kurds deliberately dropped dead animals and toxic chemicals into the wells to drive out the villagers, says Kearney.

Water Security donated the purification units to a number of relief groups to get them started, says Kearney.

Once the agencies put a program in place, they can apply for grants from agencies such as CARE and UNICEF for funding.

Rotary International, too, is involved in clean water efforts worldwide.

HAWS Corporation of Sparks is building the devices.