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The Center of Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems

Student Award Aims to Clean Up Water at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota

Winning an award from the 2010 P3: People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability will enable a group of UIUC WaterCAMPWS students to improve access to clean water an impoverished community in South Dakota. The P3 award competition and National Sustainable Design Expo was held at the Environmental Protection Agency's 40th anniversary celebration of Earth Day on April 23-26, 2010.

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A USGS report and preliminary studies by the students indicate significant levels of arsenic and uranium in the groundwater. Many residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation, the poorest reservation in the United States, depend on wells that draw from that groundwater for their drinking water.

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"The students put a lot of work into learning about the drinking water challenges on thePine RidgeReservation in South Dakota, developing ties to the local community, and preparing a solid proposal," said the students' advisor, Charles J. Werth. Werth is a professor in the University of Illinois Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a WaterCAMPWS faculty member. "It's very rewarding to be able to help them realize this award," Werth continued, "and I look forward to working with them to develop sustainable solutions for water treatment on the reservation."

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In a study that contributes to a larger effort by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign WaterCAMPWS Lakota Water Project, students will determine if bone char, derived from local cattle operations, can be used to efficiently remove arsenic and uranium from groundwater. The development of a bone char filter has the potential to alleviate the groundwater contamination, improve public health, and provide a new market forlocal cattle bone. Members of the award-winning student team are Bridget Curren, Alex Llewellyn, Peter Maraccini and Kimberly Parker.

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"I think the major goal of the P3 grant is to stress that it is a process," said Curren. "You can't just go, implement, and leave. You have to create incentive for the upkeep of the system; this requires community outreach. This project should turn out to be very beneficial to the Oglala Sioux community, and I am very excited to be working on it!

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Throughout the project, students will be working with advisors at UIUC and Oglala Lakota College and with residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation.

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This year, two University of Illinois teams received P3 Awards. Engineering students from WaterCAMPWS were on both teams, creating a total of six P3 Awards won by WaterCAMPWS students over the past three years for their work with communities in India, Guatemala, Nigeria and the United States.