Samaritan Water believes that everyone should have access to good drinking water.  We want to save lives in developing nations by partnering with businesses, governments and non-governmental agencies to make good water accessible and to use these systems as a catalyst for healthier, more productive communities.  Our systems are scalable. At a minimum of 50 gallons per minute each of our containers can impact literally thousands of lives.  100 units could imapct over 200,000 lives.  Since larger populations are generally found near abundant surface waters, this is our niche.  We want to see hundreds if not thousands of these systems installed so that we can get our costs down to make them even more affordable for less fortunate communities. Our vision also includes development of a scalable passive water purification system that utilizes gravity, specialized vegetation and filtration methods for more remote and poorer communities.  Samaritan Water will impact our own community by providing jobs.  Our vision is to establish assembly in an area of the city that needs revitalization.

How We Are Creating It

The water purification process involves 2 primary steps, depending upon initial water conditions; namely, clarification and disinfection.  

The first step, clarification, is often a 2 part process; clarification being the removal of solids from water.  It is easy to keep debris from entering such a process but suspended solids are much more difficult to remove. All other steps depend upon or work MUCH more efficiently with suspended particles removed. Traditional approaches to clarification have involved huge settling tanks or acres of settling ponds.   Our consulting engineer is the inventor of high rate clarification equipment using magnetic ballast clarification. Magnetic ballast clarification (MBC) is a scalable technology that rapidly removes suspended solids from water.  A 200 gallon per minute system would take up only a 4ft x 6 ft x 8ftH space.  This equipment uses a readily available magnetite (magnetic) sand inside of a tank with a polymer that causes the suspended solids (waste) to adhere to the magnetic.  Motor driven paddles mix the sand into the water and drums with rare earth magnets attract the sand with the adhered solid waste which is then sheared off and removed from the system.  A mechanical process then separates the sand from the "waste" and then reintroduces the sand into the system. This is the best high rate clarification system on the market and we are working directly with the inventor.  Each system will be configured to the situation. Depending upon desired results additional filtration can be added to remove the smaller particles missed by MBC. The last stage of the process is disinfection which eliminates bacterias, viruses and other waterborne pathogens. 

A variety of proven approaches have been used. We chose to work with E Clear Technologies because they have a proprietary and emerging technology that is simple, robust and cost effective.  E Clear combines a proprietary electronic oxidation process with a copper ionization process to provide a disinfection system that kills the bugs and provides a longer lasting residual disinfection.  The E Clear system uses the water molecule itself by breaking it up into 4 different oxidizing molecules - OH-, O-, O2, H2O2 - which work to aggressively disinfect the water. The copper ion process provides a residual disinfection component. This system combines the best mix of cost and effectiveness. Even though chlorine is a less expensive method, much research has proven that chlorine is harmful and has contributed to the increased occurrence of certain types of cancers and other illnesses. These systems easily fit as an assembly insdie of 20' cargo containers.  Never before has a system been developed using these 2 technologies.  There is no other system that matches ours in terms of cost, size and capacity.  The 20' containers can be purchased locally, prewired.  The MBC equipments is manufactured locally. 

E Clear ships from South Africa. The systems would be assembled locally and shipped from Wilmington, NC or nearby port. Our desire is to bring these systems into higher population areas in developing nations to impact the most people possible.

Our Story & Why You Should Support Us

Samaritan Water was formed by Mark Baldwin and Tom McManus in consultation with Steve Cort. Mark first teamed up with Tom upon learning of his interest in community development in Africa. After several years of developing contacts and relationships we discovered Steve Cort and realized that water was an ideal means to accomplish our goals.  We were fortunate to find a kindred spirit in Steve.

Mark Baldwin began his business career in the mid 80's having started several companies during his 25+ years career.  In starting Samaritan Water he is pursuing a business that offered an opportunity to learn, travel and explore, profit and help others in the process. 

Tom McManus has been a general contractor for most of his working career. Early in his career he cofounded Habitat for Humanity in Boston along with South Boston Housing Inc. He has done a variety of real estate development projects that he has managed and owned. Tom was able to procure the sale of agricultural equipment and training to the Republic of Congo through a company he partnered.This experience peaked his desire to participate in further community development projects in third world countries.

Steve Cort is a chemical engineer by education.  After an extensive career with a number of large corporations Steve formed a company that distributes a proprietary line of chemicals.  He subsequently invented his design for magnetic ballast clarification and has continued to improve the process.  Steve has since developed a desire to see his inventions and engineering acumen help save lives finding in Samaritan Water a vehicle through which to do this.

As a team, Samaritan Water shares a common belief that everyone should have access to good drinking water.  As the name implies we want to use our technology to help save lives by bringing good drinking water (and water treatment processes) to more people as cost effectively as possible.  We are committed to using our systems to encourage better health through better water and economic development through a commitment to the communities in which our equipment is installed.

We exist to empower you to become a social innovator. By providing social entrepreneurs, changemakers and non-profits with the tools you need to rally your community and raise funds, together we can turn ideas into action and impact.

The truth is there is no shortage of problems in the world. But the good news is there’s also no shortage of people with the ideas and passion to address those problems. These are our people, the changemakers. Too often however, the vision for change doesn’t come packaged with the resources needed to make it happen. StartSomeGood provides social entrepreneurs with a platform to raise funds and build a community of supporters -- all in a fun, engaging and community-driven way. Our site taps into the power of community, allowing social entrepreneurs to ask for financial support from supporters from around the world. We give them the tools to update their supporters and provide unique rewards in exchange for support - on their first campaign, and for future campaigns down the road.

We’ve taken the crowdfunding model -- which is growing in popularity world-wide -- and customized it to reflect the unique needs of social entrepreneurs.

If you are visiting for the first time, we know you’ll find many worthwhile initiatives and inspiring changemakers here. We hope you’ll choose to chip in to help these important ventures start and thrive, to help those who are helping our world. Then we hope you’ll think about what your community needs, and the good you might start yourself. And when you’re ready to get started, we’re ready to help.