Clean Water is Flowing in Kiribati

In September 2022, Elder Peter F. Meurs, General Authority Seventy and Pacific Area President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, met with government officials on the island nation of Kiribati to ask them what the biggest need was facing their country.

The answer: Clean drinking water in the outer islands – where rising sea levels and reducing rainwater left people with no alternative to drinking contaminated ground water. Infant mortality, dysentery, and other sicknesses had risen significantly.

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A week later, Elder Meurs was in Brisbane meeting with Latter-day Saint leaders in a coordinating council (regional leadership) meeting. Before the meeting began, he spoke to the leaders about the water challenges in Kiribati.

President Adam Smith from the Church’s Gold Coast Stake reported that he had just returned from a Pacific water conference and that Marc Mocellin in New Caledonia had a solution.

Elder Meurs says he contacted Marc Mocellin and “the solution has been implemented.”

Humanitarian missionaries, Jeff and Judy Brock, were assigned to be project managers for the Kiribati Outer Island Solar-Powered Desalination Project.

“We went into this project full steam ahead, with all the passion and enthusiasm that the hope of life-saving clean water generates in one’s soul,” Sister Brock recalled.

Partnering with the SUEZ Group and funded by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what was heart-felt hope in 2022 became reality on August 11, 2024.

It was then that clean drinking water started to flow from the first solar-powered desalination plant on the Kiribati islet of Takaeang off the of island of Aranuka.

According to the Brocks, SUEZ engineers trained local islanders on how to maintain and monitor water flow rates and solar capacity. “They take great care of the equipment,” Sister Brock said.

This labour of love wasn’t without its share of obstacles. Overloaded barges, equipment delivered to one island needed on another, scheduling deliveries around spring tides so locals could unload materials as close to the shore as possible – nothing about this project came easy.

Many of the remote islands where the desalination plants are located are only accessible by boat. Having enough containers for the fuel required to make the long journey across the open ocean determines whether the work gets done.

Just before one of these journeys, the Brocks discovered they didn’t have enough containers for the fuel to make the trip.

In a social media post, Sister Brock appealed to the people of Tarawa for extra containers.

“A 14-year-old boy responded with five, 20-litre containers we were able to fill with fuel just hours before our early morning departure. He saved us!”

In this first of four phases of desalination plant installations in Kiribati, two other plants quickly came online on other islands: Onotoa on January 11, 2025, and Beru on February 6, 2025.

Two more will commence operation on the islands of Abatiku in March, and Arorae in April, 2025.

These first five desalination plants will serve approximately 6,000 I-Kiribati, each producing about 40,000 litres of water per day. In a country where six to eight children die every week due to illness associated with contaminated water, this is a life-saving project.

Phase two will bring clean water to the islands of Maiana, North Tarawa, the north and south ends of the island of Marakei, and the island of Abaiang.

Phases three and four will include the installation of 10 more desalination plants on some of the most remote islands in the South Pacific.

Clean water is indeed flowing in Kiribati.