Vessel Convening · May 5, 2026
Global Lessons for
U.S. WASH
Twenty-five years of international practice — what's worked, what hasn't, and what might help close the U.S. water access gap.
Evan Thomas
Professor, CU Boulder · Mortenson Center in Global Engineering & Resilience
CEO, Virridy
The Challenge
Water Quality Impairment at Scale
4B
People
drink microbially contaminated water
60%
of GDP
threatened by water insecurity
10%
of Emissions
half from water management, half from unmanaged human wastewater
50%
U.S. Rivers
fail Clean Water Act standards
Root cause: The gap persists because it's invisible, under-funded, and operationally orphaned — the same conditions the global WASH sector has been wrestling with for 25 years, with mixed results.
The Challenge · Global E. coli Data
10MObservations
180KSites
40Years
7Databases
Pillar 1 · From Visibility to Accountability
The Lume in Action
Seine River · Paris
Pastoralist Boreholes · Kenya
Field Testing · Boulder Creek
In-Situ Monitoring · Bridge Deployment
Hand-Off · What Comes Next
What's working overseas,
ready to come home.
Visibility, government commitment, capacity — each pillar of Vessel's roadmap has international precedent. The next eighty minutes are about which lessons fit here.
Laura, over to you.
Vessel Convening · May 5, 2026
CU Boulder · Mortenson Center in Global Engineering & Resilience