HORIZON INTERNATIONAL SOLUTIONS SITE

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on 7 December 2011 announced it will provide up to $1.8 million for projects across the country to protect Americans’ health and help restore urban waters by improving water quality and supporting community revitalization. The funding is part of EPA’s Urban Waters program, which supports communities in their efforts to access, improve and benefit from their urban waters and the surrounding land. Urban waters are canals, rivers, lakes, wetlands, aquifers, estuaries, bays and oceans.

Investing 0.16 per cent of global GDP in the water sector could reduce water scarcity and halve the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation in less than four years, according to United Nations research released on August 25, 2011.

"Safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights," the General Assembly declared on July 28 2010. The declaration expresses deep concern that almost 900 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water.

Inadequate sanitation and its devastating effects on the world’s poor comprise humanity’s most urgent, yet solvable crisis, according to international leaders and experts who convened at the 2009 World Water Week in Stockholm.