The Corporate Philanthropist: The Global Water Crisis - Page 4
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The Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009
On Capitol Hill, legislation introduced in the Senate would put the U.S. in the lead among governments in responding to the Millennium Development Goals for water and sanitation. The Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009, a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Dick Durbin, Bob Corker, and Patty Murray on March 17, seeks to reach 100 million people with safe water and sanitation by 2015 and to strengthen the capacity of USAID and the State Department to carry out the initial Water for the Poor Act of 2005, which made access to safe water and sanitation for developing countries a specific policy objective of U.S. foreign assistance programs. Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Donald Payne introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives on April 22. The Act was named after the late Paul Simon, who ten years ago wrote the prescient book, Tapped Out, which warned of the world’s looming clean water crisis. As a result of the 2005 Act, last year alone the U.S. helped nearly 2 million people with first time access to an improved source of drinking water and more than 1.5 million people with improved sanitation.
