Oasis International Water
It’s a puff piece for a defense contractor, but it contains a lot of interesting information. Be sure to check out the author’s name at the end of the piece.
Bruce Everson, site general manager of Water Purification Site 6-Victory, a 20-year Australian Air Force veteran and native of Townsville, Australia, oversees purified water production at his assigned site to ensure operations run smoothly. Everson’s site is responsible for producing 1,260,000 liters of water monthly, more than double that of other oasis sites.
Water: one of the most underappreciated and essential elements of life taken for granted from day to day, immediately becomes appreciated when Soldier’s boots hit ground in a desert war zone. Oasis International Water has been providing that essential element – purified water – prepared and processed in six sites on military bases across Iraq, to U.S. and international service members and civilians serving in Iraq since July 2005.
In the beginning of the war, the military faced the often perilous challenge of getting drinking water to its troops from outside sources.
“The military was paying a tremendous amount of money for water, transporting it from various countries like Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc., but more importantly they were exposing a lot of lives to (transport) water,” said Paul Jeffries, a native of Salt Lake City, and chief executive officer of Oasis.
Jeffries explained his company was selected and given the task to purify water from existing water sources in Iraq and to distribute it to servicemembers and civilians serving throughout the country. The on-site purification allows them to purify water in secured areas like a forward operating base, which has drastically cut down on dangerous exposure of Soldiers and equipment, and has saved the U.S. a lot of money.
“Annually, there were about 50,000 trucks bringing in the same amount of water that we produce here,” said Jeffries. We’ve cut it down to about 1,500 trucks per year…This has saved the government over $250 million.”
Oasis has been busy the last three years, said Jeffries. They have produced more than 800 million liters of water and project to have bottled over a billion by next year.
With such a huge volume of water passing through their production sites, the issue of quality control is a demanding job.
The company pushes their water through an extensive and highly monitored process to ensure the water maintains a high level of purity. They go so far as to store samples of their finished product in libraries for referencing purposes in case there should arise any question about the integrity of their water.
“We’ve tested water that has sat in the sun for two years in varying temperatures from winter to summer, and it has maintained its purity very well,” said Alan Morrell, a native Salt Lake City, who is the director of contract and compliance at Oasis. “I don’t believe you can find a more pure bottle of water in the Middle East than we make.”
He continued to say that in the three years they have been doing the job, they have had less than a dozen complaints and those complaints were not about health-threatening issues.
One of the biggest challenges that the company deals with daily is the logistical problem of determining what the raw material needs of all the purification sites will be and preparing for inevitable equipment breaks. They vigilantly maintain 45 day’s worth of product on hand at each site, and uses the same raw materials and equipment in all their plants so if there’s an issue, they can transfer materials from one site to another, said Bruce Everson, a native of Townsville, Australia, and general manager of the site on Camp Liberty.
Everson’s post, called WPS-6 Victory by the company, the largest of the six Oasis sites, was once hit by a mortar that took out one of the generators. The strict regimen of preparation that Oasis follows has served them well when faced with unforeseen events, such as mortar attacks.
“Within nine hours of the attack we replaced the damaged generator and the site was back in production,” said Everson.
“Delivering water is a mission critical activity –it has to happen,” said Jeffries. The amount of redundancy of equipment you see in our yards is to make certain that the plant continually and predictably produces high quality, and high volumes of water.”
“Having been in Iraq for so long we’ve learned what it takes to produce consistently,” he added.
Whether it be mortars, broken machinery, or harsh environmental conditions, Oasis has figured out how overcome the inevitable obstacles to get water to the service members whose mission could not continue without it. They have become an important piece of the logistical puzzle that keeps the U.S. military hydrated and healthy, a role that proves they have truly become and “oasis” in the desert.
DVIDS
By Sgt. Whitney Houston
Multi-National Division - Baghdad
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