Project Well provides safe drinking water to an area of India where groundwater is contaminated by arsenic. Ingesting arsenic through drinking water causes many serious and often fatal health consequences, including various cancers, lung diseases, diabetes, and reproductive problems. We continue to discover additional health effects through health studies. Read more about arsenic health effects here and information in slides in pdf.

Our water sources—based on traditional dugwell designs that are familiar to villagers—are inexpensive and easy to maintain. We make these water sources sustainable by developing community-based programs so users take responsibility for their own wells. Together with our local partner Aqua Welfare Society, Project Well continually monitors our water projects so if problems arise, we can address them immediately and make sure villagers can continue to use the wells. We provide long-term guidance and assistance to users, unlike many other water projects that are installed and left unsupported. Project Well also educates communities on proper sanitation and personal hygiene practices, as well as the effects of drinking arsenic- or bacteria-contaminated water.

100% of donated funds go to our work in the field, as all United States officers provide their services pro bono. Our US officers also conduct research as members of the Arsenic Health Effects Research Group (ASRG) at University of California, Berkeley.  

Construction 

Step 1. Geologically-appropriate sites are selected in villages heavily contaminated by arsenic. Community members donate the land.

Surveillance & Maintenance

Step 2. In the months and years following construction, we follow up regularly to make sure wells are in good repair and being used.

Education and Awareness Programs

To make the projects sustainable, we need to educate the communities, especially young students, on the importance of safe water.
ARSENIC CRISIS
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Thousands are being slowly poisoned from arsenic-contaminated drinking water in India and Bangladesh. The tube wells, which once saved their lives by preventing gastrointestinal diseases, are now killing them.
  • Exposure to arsenic in drinking water has been established to cause cancer of the lung, kidney, liver, skin and bladder.
  • Those who are exposed to arsenic in utero and early childhood may develop diseases such as acute myocardial infarction, childhood liver cancer and bronchiectasis, a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
In India, the eight very populated states are in the arsenic-prone zone. They are West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Manipur where occurrence of arsenic in the drinking water is natural and in Andhra Pradesh the presence of arsenic in water is due to mining.  As per 2006 data six million people were exposed in one state alone (West Bengal, of which Kolkata/Calcutta is the capital). Later data showed that only 25.5 percentage of government installed tubewells contained arsenic more than 50 parts per billion (the Standard followed in India set by the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission). This does not consider thousands of private tubewells. Millions more are drinking contaminated water  without their knowledge. Efforts to alleviate the crisis is ongoing but not at the rate it should be done. Time is running out to provide arsenic -safe water immediately to prevent thousands of deaths from cancer due to long-term arsenic exposure.
  • In 1982, Dr. K. C. Saha, a dermatologist in Calcutta, West Bengal, noticed skin lesions on patients, which led to the search for a cause.
  • In 1993/94, he linked the problem to the high levels of arsenic in drinking water.
  • Dr. Dipankar Chakraborti, Director of School of Environmental Studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, did extensive investigations and brought the issue to the attention of the world.
  • Since then, numerous seminars, meetings, programs have been organized to raise global and local awareness of arsenic poisoning. Numerous research papers have been published.
  • However, the fact remains that millions of people continue to be exposed to high levels of arsenic.
  • In addition to serious health problems caused by arsenic exposure, numerous social problems have occurred. For instance, women with skin changes due to arsenic are sent back to their parents' house, and their husbands are remarrying. Affected families are being isolated. People consider arsenic poisoning symptoms a 'curse'.