How a purple school bus brings clean drinking water to Navajo Nation

Photo: Mark Henle/azcentral.com

Video (see link below): Mark Sorensen, Star School co-founder, talks about an old school bus that was converted into a solar-powered water desalination system to purify well water for residents on the Navajo Nation.

Many in the Navajo Nation don’t have running water and the well water often isn’t safe to drink. Residents turn to bottled water, which can be expensive, while some see desalination as a solution.

LEUPP — Half a dozen small hands, palms wide open, shoot into the air and stay suspended in eager response to a question. “How many of you guys have family members that haul water?” The Navajo grade-school students are huddled in an old purple school bus, so close to one another that they can hardly move. They come from families that make several trips each week to haul water, usually with tanks in the beds of pickup trucks, from community wells to their homes. Two more groups of students wait outside for their turn inside the crowded bus for a chance to see science in real time.

The bus is outfitted with desalination equipment that can remove contaminants from groundwater that would be otherwise undrinkable. It’s part of a program that put desalination […]

Full article + video: How a purple school bus brings clean drinking water to Navajo Nation

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