Clean Water to Puerto Rico Hurricane Victims Through EPA - WaterStep Collaboration
WASHINGTON (PRWEB) August 21, 2018 -- The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) is excited to present a new video highlighting lifesaving technology brought to the commercial market through collaboration between the federal government and the private sector. A collaboration between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and WaterStep continues to deliver safe water solutions and products for those in need, including to victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
The video features how the EPA and its Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) partner, WaterStep, a nonprofit that creates safe water solutions and products for those in need developed this emergency water treatment solution. Through the CRADA partnership, WaterStep worked with EPA researchers at the EPA Test and Evaluation Facility to test and deliver an emergency water treatment system to provide thousands of people access to safe water.
“The EPA-WaterStep CRADA is a shining example of how research and development collaborations between private entities and federal laboratories can have a powerful impact on our world in times of crisis,” said Amanda Horansky McKinney, FLC Education & Training Committee Chair.
After Hurricane Maria in September 2017, the National Puerto Rico Leadership Council Education Fund purchased WaterStep’s mini water treatment units, a product brought to market thanks to the company’s CRADA partnership with the EPA.
Mark Hogg, Founder and CEO of WaterStep, speaks candidly in the video about his experiences delivering the units to Puerto Rico.
“We drove up the hill, and the gentlemen began to shout in Spanish ‘Pure Water!’” Hogg recounted. “The people poured out of the town and gathered some 50, 70, 100 people behind our truck. It was the only safe water they’d had.”
From the collaborative work by the EPA and WaterStep, this lifesaving technology is used to create safe drinking water for dozens of communities across Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria struck. The system can purify up to 10,000 gallons of water a day, even without power, and can be customized based on a disaster’s effects.
The CRADA success video can be viewed on the FLC YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db9M1Si0Jkk.
For additional information about CRADAs and the dedicated R&D work of federal laboratories and their partners, visit the Success Stories Gallery.
About the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC)
Organized in 1974 and formally chartered by the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986, the FLC is a nationwide network of approximately 300 federal laboratories, centers, parent departments, and agencies that establishes strategies and opportunities for linking laboratory mission technologies and expertise with the marketplace. To accomplish its mission of assisting the movement of innovative federal research and development into the U.S. economy, the FLC provides various resources from training to regional and national meetings so its members can obtain the resources they need to achieve successful technology transfer. To learn more about the FLC and its mission, visit http://www.federallabs.org.
Denise Wainer, Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, https://www.federallabs.org/, +1 (856) 667-6770 Ext: 306, [email protected]
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