Access to safe water supply has been oneof the top priorities in developing countries over the pastthree to four decades, and billions of dollars have beeninvested in pursuit of the goal of universal service. Andyet the general consensus at the 2002 United Nations WorldSummit on Sustainable Development was that the currentreality-as well as the situation expected in the nearfuture-are far from that goal (The Economist Sept. 7-13,2002). In fact, recent reports emphasize that the world isfacing a serious water crisis and that water access andservice delivery in the developing world need to be improveddramatically and urgently, especially if we are to makegains in the fight against poverty, hunger, and disease(United Nations 2003). World leaders not only agree thatwater is an important part of the core development agendabut have also committed to ambitious targets for expandingaccess to water services. At the U.N. Millennium Summit in2000 and subsequently at the Johannesburg Earth Summit in2002, world leaders agreed to a set of time-bound andmeasurable development targets-widely known as theMillennium Development Goals for 2015-which include acommitment to halve the proportion of people without accessto safe drinking water.
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