More than one billion people worldwide – roughly one out of every seven – have no choice but to use unsafe, contaminated water. To help solve this issue, Pentair Inc. and its Foundation announced a new five-year grant, totaling $1 million, to the non-profit Water Missions International (WMI). The multi-year grant will fund the implementation of clean water and sanitation projects in developing countries, further building on the work of Pentair's Project Safewater initiative with WMI.

WMI currently operates water-quality and sanitation programs in nine countries – Honduras, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Indonesia, Haiti, Peru and Belize. Headquartered in Charleston, S.C., WMI is a nonprofit engineering organization serving the water and sanitation needs of people in developing countries and disaster areas. It uses low-maintenance, appropriate water technologies for drinking water treatment and distribution, wastewater management and storm water control.

"Our grant to Water Missions International will benefit countless lives by speeding access to sustainable, safe drinking water sources globally," says Randall Hogan, Pentair's chairman and chief executive officer. "Through our previous work with WMI on Project Safewater-Colón, we have shown that there is an affordable solution to the global water crisis. We look forward to applying what we've learned to further improve health and sanitation conditions in communities around the world."

Pentair has collaborated with WMI since 2007. In that time, Pentair's Project Safewater initiative with WMI in Colon, Honduras, demonstrated that for only pennies a day per person, it's possible to provide people with access to safe drinking water in regions where they don't have it now.  As a result, approximately 300,000 people in Colon now have access to sustainable, safe water and sanitation facilities, along with a related 80-percent reduction in waterborne diseases. 

"As impressive as our progress in Honduras has been, there is still more work to be done, more lives to improve and more communities to transform," says Hogan. "We can make a difference in the global water crisis."