Anne Raup © Special to the Rocky Heavy fog is common during the premonsoon season in eastern Nepal. In some places, the fog is being "caught" to supplement scarce supplies of clean water.

MEET THE TEAM Meet Dr. Bialek and the student engineers, and hear what motivates them about the project. › The team OTHER STORIES A villager's wish: drinkable water, irrigated fields Water crisis a fact of life in Kathmandu Main story: Expedition to Nepal SLIDE SHOW Expedition to Nepal VIDEO Coloradans on engineering expedition in Nepal ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS - USA Founded: 2002 Headquarters: Longmont Chapters: 225 professional and student chapters in the United States Membership: 12,000 Projects: 45 countries To learn more: www.ewb-usa.org or call 303-772-2723 WHERE IN THE WORLD? Click on the map for a larger view.

KATHMANDU, Nepal - On a blistering hot afternoon, ancient, brightly painted water tankers, fringe and prayer shawls hanging in their windows, labor through town delivering untreated water to thousands of homes.

The city's robust population of monkeys watch from the rooftops.

Oliver Jones, program coordinator of WaterAid Nepal, estimates that more than half the homes in his Kathmandu neighborhood don't have access to the city's overburdened water system and must rely on the tankers that deliver water from notoriously polluted rivers.

Anne Raup © Special to the Rocky Hauling water by hand, like this woman in Ilam Bazaar in eastern Nepal, is a fact of life in much of the country. Access to clean water is one of the major challenges facing the country, torn in recent years by political unrest.

As in India and other Hindu countries, rivers here serve as sites for funeral pyres, carrying the ashes of the dead to eternal rest.

WaterAid is a London-based nonprofit that helps build water and sanitation projects in poor countries.

"Kathmandu has a massive water shortage," Jones says. "It's a valley that doesn't contain the resources to serve the people here."

A decade of civil strife and an ongoing population boom in the city of 600,000 have made its old water system even more inadequate. Running out of water on any given day isn't uncommon.

When the United Nations talks about a world water crisis, cities like Kathmandu immediately come to mind.

Hotels have water tanks sitting in odd places, with small rubber hoses running along balconies and rooftops.

Some residents whose water taps no longer work pull water from illegal groundwater wells or have water delivered via the old trucks. Others tap into the water lines that still operate, reducing pressure in the system and introducing even more contaminants.

When water finally arrives, it has to be boiled and filtered before it can be used.

Ultimately, the Nepalese capital hopes to build a new water system that will deliver water via a series of tunnels and pipelines from rivers far beyond the Kathmandu Valley.

Jones says the government has tried repeatedly to bring in private international water companies to rehabilitate and expand the city system, but even with millions of dollars promised by the Asian Development Bank, there have been no takers.

"We've seen a lot of Western water companies come in, realize they can't make money, pull out and leave things in a bigger mess than they were before," Jones said.

smithj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5474.