A Thirst for Good

All you have to do is go where people are impoverished and see the struggles of the people who are living there to know that something has to be done.

Matthew Talbert

AA team of students from the BioResource and Agricultural Engineering Department devoted their senior project to designing and building a drill that will be used to access water in remote and underdeveloped regions throughout the world. The students spent more than 829 hours over three quarters designing and fabricating the water well drill, making improvements to an existing model that will enable it to be readily used in drought-stricken areas that lack the resources to implement existing water drilling methods. Soon the drill will be manufactured by Aquafor, a humanitarian group founded by entrepreneur Matthew Talbert, who studied business administration at Cal Poly in 1977. Talbert provided the seven-member student team with an existing prototype and the $25,000 needed for materials to build a new and improved model. “All you have to do is go where people are impoverished and see the struggles of the people who are living there to know that something has to be done,” Talbert said. “People are walking miles and miles for filthy water and that is unacceptable. We have it so fortunate here, it is imperative that we give back.” The Borelite Drill is a lightweight cable tool water well drill that uses a repetitive motion to smash and chip away at soil and rock. While existing drills use exorbitant amounts of water and fuel to drill quickly, the student-built drill relies on a 10-horsepower engine and only 10 gallons of water per day to drill. “The drill will take longer to reach the needed depth to acquire water, but in the impoverished areas that these drills will be used, people have time, but they don’t have resources such as gas and water,” said Peter Livingston, head of the BioResource and Agricultural Engineering Department. Students designed and built the drill, as well as provided the design drawings needed to replicate it. The weight and size of the final design allow for two fully constructed drills to be placed in a shipping container and sent overseas to countries in need. “This is designed specifically to be able to A THIRST FOR GOOD