UCLA’s rising senior Shreesh Karjagi learned all about phytoremediation, or deploying plants to filter contaminated water, in Professor Shaily Mahendra’s environmental microbiology classes at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. A self-defined “third-culture kid,” raised with multiple worldviews, he saw a need for a simple method to improve traditional irrigation systems without upsetting social or economic balances.
When a volunteer opportunity in a Balinese community came up, Karjagi immediately took it. He spent the summer working alongside farmers in a cooperative, miles from Bali’s tourist beaches. Karjagi persuaded the locals to help him build his device, a web of rafts framed by discarded plastic piping holding grasses that would filter the water running through rice fields and homes. The raft’s dangling grasses, cleansed the water as it flowed through, almost magically removing fecal matter, chemicals and debris. It was remarkably effective: Tests showed the once-murky water was now safe for irrigation.
“I knew from my own background how vital safe water is, but some well-intentioned solutions have been expensive, prone to failure and seen as coming from outside, from the West,” he said. “I wanted to get around that by working with the villagers using materials that were already there.”
His mentor, Mahendra, is proud of Karjagi and others who go into the field — in his case, very far afield — to share their UCLA-gleaned knowledge. “Good engineering, whether it’s massive projects or very local,” she said, “makes a difference in so many lives.”
Read more about Karjagi’s incredible innovation at UCLA Newsroom.
Image Source: John Harlow
