Bottling water and saving lives is soldiers’ proud claim

Helmand Province in Afghanistan is unforgiving territory. Hot, arid and dusty, the daytime temperature can reach as high as 55 degrees C and it can take three weeks to acclimatise on arrival.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) advises its personnel deployed there to drink 10 litres of water each day just to stay hydrated, but how do you ensure that there is sufficient water available in the middle of the desert?

In this case, the answer was a simple one - bore down to the water table and bottle your own. That is exactly what British Army engineers did in 2007 when they drilled down more than 122 metres (400 feet) to tap into water that naturally springs under the desert.

It is difficult to conceive of from ground level where the sun shines relentlessly on an endless expanse of sand, but the massive desert base sits above a vast underground lake that is constantly topped up by rain run-off from distant mountains. 

The water is pumped up to the MoD’s dedicated processing and bottling plant where it is carbon filtered, chlorinated and sampled for pesticides and other impurities three times an hour.

Staff are proud to have achieved an uninterrupted supply since day one; no mean feat given the plant’s location in the heart of war-torn Helmand, the world’s most hostile environment.

The plant produces enough water to supply all 14,000 troops stationed at Camp Bastion and experts say the quality is as good as any big-brand mineral water you can buy.

The MoD decided to build the plant after a series of Taliban attacks on the supply lines bringing drinking water over land from Pakistan and the Middle East to the camp.

A survey by the Army’s Royal Engineers discovered a considerable reserve of ground water under the camp and sunk wells to draw fresh water from an aquifer that is fed from the Hindu Kush mountain range of eastern and central Afghanistan. Rainwater from the majestic Himalayas and Hindu Kush has accumulated under the dry lands of central Helmand for more than 1,000 years.

The plant cost 11 million pounds to build, but has realised the MoD more than 18m pounds since opening because it no longer has to securely transport water imported over land to the base, considerably reducing its carbon footprint.

Over the course of a year the plant - which is only 30 metres by 35m in size - produces 12 million litres of drinking water, and since opening for business in February 2008, it has notched up enough production to fill four Olympic-size swimming pools.

Every day, 100,000 litres of that water are pumped to the surface through four boreholes but levels are naturally renewed with water that runs off from the mountains surrounding the camp. About 48,000 litres go through the full treatment process at the plant where it is bombarded with ultraviolet light, chlorinated, softened and treated.

It is then bottled to rehydrate thirsty coalition forces at Bastion and Patrol and forward operating bases around Helmand Province. The rest is piped to the water mains that supply the camp. Batches are tested hourly to make sure there are no bacteria, such as E.coli, or contamination.

Even the plastic bottles are made on camp; they arrive at the base as pallet-loads of tiny test-tube-shaped preformed plastic containers. These are placed into a mould and air is blasted into them at 84 degrees C, pumping them up to their one-litre size. Producing them in this way saves transport costs; a single pallet-load of preforms makes 11 pallets of full-size bottles.

Similar to the plant, the bottles and their labels were specifically designed to meet strict military requirements demanded by the MoD. The bottles are square to make sure they fit into troops' webbing, as well as not rolling around in vehicles or aircraft.

They are also tougher than commercially available bottles, increasing the shelf-life of the water to two years; in an ordinary plastic container the water would only last 12 months, or probably less if exposed to the sort of baking and bashing a Bastion bottle has to put up with.

In early tests, a pallet-load of bottles was left outside under the Helmand sun for two years and samples were sent to the Institute of Naval Medicine in Gosport, England for testing. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, they were all fine. As well as lasting longer in harsh conditions, these bottles can be air-dropped without giving those on the ground an impromptu shower.

The quality of the water is critical and standards at Camp Bastion’s bottling plant are high. The man in charge of extracting and processing is Colin Howell, the plant manager. He said: “We have to be scrupulously clean here. If the water gets contaminated then it affects every single person in camp. Our quality control is second to none and we sample and test the water every 20 minutes.”

Howell reckons that the filtration system is so good it could take out biological warfare contamination if absolutely necessary. Every batch of water is tested in the purpose-built water-testing laboratory; each week, samples are sent to the Institute of Naval Medicine for independent verification:

"We have never recorded a failure, and we don't expect to. Our water is compliant with the Natural Mineral Water, Spring Water and Bottled Water (England) Regulations 2007, and the Water Supply (Water Quality Regulations) 2000," added Howell.

Normally, the plant operates 24/7 with no shut-downs for meal breaks or shift change-overs; there are two 10-hour shifts followed by a rigorous four-hour cleaning and maintenance routine.

"We are at least as clean as the hospital," says Howell proudly. "After all, the worst the hospital can do is kill all its patients - we could kill everyone on the whole base."