"Life was a lot harder when we didn't have this water."
When Lupe Tapuy was raising her oldest child in the village of Machacuyacu, tucked into a lush bluff not far from the Napo River in the Amazon basin rainforest, he was constantly sick with stomach ailments. They drew water for drinking and cooking from a nearby stream where they also bathed, which looked clean but contained parasites and bacteria. To Tapuy, 30, and the other 170 residents, illness was simply a part life spent raising yucca, cocoa and plantains while living in