A group from Ball State University is working to help bring clean drinking water to areas in Nepal near Mount Everest.
Ball State Geological Sciences Professor Kirsten Nicholson says near the base camp to Mount Everest, local residents are dealing with contaminated water mainly due to a lack of modern sanitation and the increasing number of tourists annually.
About 20-thousand people come through the area every year. Nicholson says the first part of the Himalayan Sustainability Initiative is analyzing the water to see how bad it is, where the good and bad water is located and hopefully from where the main source of the pollution is coming. She says that will help isolate the causes of the pollution and possibly source good, clean drinking water.
Nicholson led a team to the region back in May to collect data but that trip was cut short due to many team members, herself included, becoming ill.
"When we were there we had hand sanitizer and soap. And we were being really careful and not eating any fresh vegetables and being super careful when handling all the water, and we got sick," says Nicholson. "Imagine if you lived there and didn't have all those things."
Nicholson is going back to Nepal later this month to collect more data and hopes to have additional funding to begin fixing the problem by 2016. She says the ultimate goal is to be able to find and drill wells in order to bring clean drinking water to the people who need it.
