New fundraiser for advertising funds

We've just started a new fundraiser, this one just to get advertising funds. Our past fundraiser didn't work to well, we can't get the word out far enough ourselves. With some advertising funds we'll be able to reach farther, get more attention, and hopefully enough funds to get the project kicked off.

You can donate to the new fundraiser at http://gofundme.com/fresh-water or you can make a donation through Paypal on our donation page.

Lets spread the word and make a difference, thanks!

Kern County California

So it's been a while and Fresh Water for All seems to be gaining a little bit of attention, more traffic to the site and about double the likes on facebook (still not nearly what we need) so I'm going to give this another go and try and see what kind of support I can get.

Looking at the news lately we've seen a lot about the horrible drought in California and we think this would be a great opportunity to put a large solar still to work. Land in Kern County California is pretty cheap, is only roughly 150 miles from the ocean, and is desperately in need of water. With it being 150 miles from the ocean we'd have to either pipe in seawater or go ahead with one of the seawater channels, but I'm not thinking that we'd get the support needed to do that before we showed that the still itself would do the job.

Bottom line, we need funding to get anything started. From my standpoint the amount we need to raise to actually get something built is quite a figure, but for some it's really not. If 5k people donated $50, we'd be good to go. So what I'm asking of you is simple- share Fresh Water for All with as many people as you can. Print flyers, post on Craigslist, share us on Facebook, tell your co-workers, anything you can do to make more people aware of what we're trying to do will be a tremendous help to getting things going. I'm going to keep looking for donors and grants (but most grants it seems we'd need 501(c)3 status, which is expensive and time consuming) and seeing what I can do but I need as much help as possible getting the word out.

Thanks for your support and for sharing!

The difference between spreading out existing water and creating new sources of water

It's come to our attention that the public seems to be greatly misinformed, and someone tried to tell me today that Fresh Water for All's project has already been done and then gave me a link to information on CAP where they are diverting part of the Colorado river.

We in America are spoiled. This is a good thing, I like that my family has it pretty good compared to many places in the world, but the down side is that we aren't able to sympathize with problems we haven't had the misfortune of experiencing. The whole purpose of this project is making it so that we DON'T experience the same kind of problems other countries are already having with water, but it's hard to get people to understand that there is a water crisis when they can turn a knob and water comes out.

Programs like CAP serve a great purpose, it is important that we utilize sources of water we already have. What it doesn't address however is what happens when the water sources they are spreading out as thinly as possible run out. There is a finite amount of available fresh water and there is a growing population and demand for that fresh water. Solving the problem by transporting water from other places simply extends the problem for the next generations to deal with later.

What Fresh Water for All wants to do is add NEW sources of fresh water. Not diverting fresh water from elsewhere but CREATING fresh water where it's needed most. We won't run out of seawater, diverting seawater and turning it into fresh water makes a lot more sense in the long term. We hit a decades long drought and our current system is fine, until the reserves run out. Then where are we left when there's nothing left to divert? The only permanent solution is turning seawater into fresh water.

Please help support Fresh Water for All's project and share, donate, and help get the word out. Our great grandchildren deserve the same easy access to water we have today.
Check out our indiegogo campaign or visit our donation page to make a donation today. Hitting those sharing buttons only takes a minute but it goes a long way toward helping us reach our goal.

Indiegogo Fundraiser

We've already mentioned it on facebook and put up a few posts in online classifieds, we have started a fundraiser on Indiegogo. CLICK HERE to donate and share the page. We're hoping to raise $500k, a very lofty goal but we have faith that with your help we can get the attention the project deserves and reach our goal.
Now most successful crowdfunding campaigns have a decent sized advertising budget starting out, and already have email marketing lists, funds for facebook and google ads, etc. We don't have any of that. We're a small organization right now and we're relying on help from people like you to spread the message. All it takes is a few quick social shares and you would be doing a lot to raise awareness.

This fundraiser will last for 60 days, and when it is successful we will be able to start construction of our initial project, a smaller scale solar still (just under an acre) off the coast of Texas. With your help we'll be building in February.

Thanks for your support and please donate what you can and help spread the word.

Selling it hard

Pro Water-Is-A-Commodity people (aka corporations or individuals that would profit from water being a corporate controlled resource) are selling hard the idea of "let the free market fix the water crisis". This wont work for one simple reason, life itself is a human right and water is life. If water is a commodity with a market driven value then human life becomes the same. Still you get little articles like THIS ONE talking about how "any economist would tell you to let the market set the price".

The problem with this is the subversive nature, the implying that any educated person knows that water-as-a-commodity is best. People in general don't look too deeply into things that don't directly effect them, and right now we aren't in a crisis the way other countries are. We can all still turn a knob and have water. For how long?

Let me paint you a picture. If corporations like Nestle have their way, water becomes completely subsidized and priced on the free market things will start to break down. Water sources will continue to not have enough to support the area populations in dry regions, becoming more and more severe. Meanwhile other sources of water (such as glacial lakes in Alaska) start being used to bottle and ship water around the world. With no new sources of fresh water however, the supply will continue to drop steadily over time. As supply goes down demand (and price) climb. The corporations controlling the water start making more profit, they don't care about 100 years from now they care about profit margins for this quarter, so no new sources are made the price is just increased. As the price goes up the cost of living goes up. Eventually people will have to choose between paying other bills or having clean water to drink. Poor families in the US are hit first, causing a drain on social services to give water to those who need it, raising taxes. The price goes up more and people have to start making more and more cutbacks on how much water they use. Agriculture gets more and more expensive making food more and more expensive. Eventually people who can't afford to pay are left without and when people get desperate they resort to desperate measures. Look forward to fights, even wars, over water.

This can easily be prevented, but we need your help. Donate, share this site, spread the word, and we can begin making new publicly owned sources of fresh clean water. Our first project is going to cost us about $300k, a very lofty goal, but once it's done and governments and other organizations see an actual example of what we can do, more funding will become available from other sources. Of course it won't be profitable, of course it isn't going to make money for anyone, but it will make sure that in 100 years we aren't living struggling day to day for survival because of a lack of water.

You can't solve Poverty without solving Water and Sanitation

I just watched an interview with Matt Damon talking about his charity Water.org and he raised a lot of valid points. People here in the US do take water for granted, they don't understand how hard it is for people in areas that don't have access to fresh clean water.

People in developing countries, mostly women, spend the majority of their day scavenging for water. The water they find is usually contaminated and makes them sick, and kills children. Every 20 seconds a child dies because they don't have access to water and it's a problem that could easily be solved if our society cared less about profitability and more about humanity. I think the water credit program Water.org has is awesome, giving people the money needed to connect to the existing infrastructure (usually only around $200). Check out water.org and see how you can help.

Now, Water.org is taking on one side of the water shortage issue. They are making it so people can connect to existing water systems (that are unfortunately subsidized instead of government run). The other side of the problem is creating new sources of fresh water. This is where Fresh Water for All comes in. We use seawater and sunlight, two things in abundance on Earth, to create new sustainable sources of fresh clean water. These new sources of water won't be ran for-profit so it also makes it more accessible for people who need it. We can actually charge water companies for access to the water produced, and that money can go toward extending the water systems giving more people access.

Fresh Water For All unfortunately doesn't have a celebrity spokesperson, and doesn't have a large advertising budget to help get the word out to raise funds and support. We need help from people like you. Sharing our posts on facebook, liking our facebook page and inviting your friends, these are things you can do that won't cost you anything more than a few minutes of your time. The more people know about Fresh Water for All, the more funding we can get and we can begin moving forward with plans.

Thanks for reading and please like, share, and donate what you can.

New Delhi Water Shortage

This is a picture we shared on Facebook a while back (before we had the blog page). This is New Delhi, the capital of India, and what you are seeing is people scrambling to get water from a water tanker.

In New Delhi, not everyone gets the benefit of plumbing and running water. The water shortage is so bad that parts that do get running water only get it for some of the day. There's a water mafia that transports illegally obtained water from other areas, which just makes the water shortage worse.

Currently the main plan of action is to build "water ATMs" in areas that don't have running water, where people can purchase water to fill up their jugs. Meanwhile people wait for an entire day or longer just for the chance to fill up from a water tanker.

This could very well be us here in the US in a few years. Our population is growing while our water resources are being tapped out. We need new sources of fresh clean water, or eventually we will run out and be in the same predicament. We can either wait until it's an immediate problem and come up with a series of temporary solutions, or we can do something about it now.

Donate, tell your friends about us, help spread the word. Together we can make a difference and stop the water crisis before it stops us.