Courtesy Photo | Staff Sgt. Stephen Lyman, of Fargo, trains Soldiers how to set up, maintain and...... read more read more
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. – It’s so obvious that it’s often taken for granted: water is essential to human life. And access to safe drinking water is critical to the sustainment and success of our military forces.
One might wonder how many bullets the Army requires to operate. But, without water for our Soldiers, bullets simply don’t matter.
Water treatment specialists in the North Dakota National Guard, including the Soldiers of the 132nd Quartermaster Company, make sure that there is useable water for any operation and in any environment.
To train and refine their skills in water purification, members of the Grand Forks-based 132nd QM Co. convened at Camp Grafton Training Center in Devils Lake, Nov. 21-23. With the help of water purification mobile training team instructors from Fort Story, Virginia, the quartermaster Soldiers are enhancing their unit’s operational capacity.
“The MTT instruction gives our Soldiers practical, hands-on training to develop their water purification skills,” said Capt. Patrick Joyce, commander for the 132nd QM Co. “We’re able to provide a safe environment for our Soldiers to acquire knowledge and improve their abilities.”
MTT trainers arrived about a week prior to the weekend’s training event to instruct select noncommissioned officers and specialists from the unit, who will train and mentor 132nd QM Co. Soldiers going forward.
“The training is enormously beneficial to the company, because our NCOs will be equipped to share advanced technical knowledge with their fellow Soldiers,” Joyce said. “We’re better prepared to accomplish our mission and serve the needs of our state than ever before.”
The Soldiers, including many new Guardsmen, spent time refreshing competencies in operating, maintaining and troubleshooting the unit’s primary water treatment equipment: Tactical Water Purification Systems and 3,000 Gallons Per Minute Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units.
From an outside perspective the systems appear highly complicated, but the quartermaster Soldiers say the complexity of the equipment is a bit deceiving. Understanding the basic premises behind acquiring, filtering and storing water makes the hundreds of pipes, switches, valves, filters and pumps appear less threatening.
“The TWPS and 3K ROWPU systems require us to understand the flow of water,” said Staff Sgt. Jeremy Regan, a squad leader in the Cando-based 2nd Platoon, 132nd QM Co. “After we’ve got the systems up and running, it’s just a matter of testing water quality and maintaining the equipment.”
Regan, who recently joined the N.D. National Guard after many years in the Army Reserve, is one of the NCOs who have been working with MTT trainers to multiply expertise within the unit.
The company’s Soldiers have become so proficient that — in just one day’s time — they could arrive on location in an operational environment, set up their water purification systems, produce 360,000 gallons of clean drinking water, and breakdown the systems to move to a new location. At 18,000 gallons per hour, they provide an invaluable service to our military.
But, while water is a vital component to sustaining Soldiers during contingency operations, many of them never pause to wonder how they got safe, fresh drinking water. Thanks to water purification specialists like those in the 132nd QM Co., there’s no reason to pause.
“Our mission is to ensure the force has the water they need, no matter what environment they are in. We can purify salt water or fresh water and distribute it to Soldiers quickly,” Regan said. “This training gave us a chance to apply knowledge in a contained environment, so we can be better prepared to react and operate in real-world situations.”
The real-world situations that the 132nd QM Co. has faced in the past have been critically important, but they haven’t always required providing safe water to Soldiers. When floodwaters inundated Minot in 2011, the company was on hand to purify water for the local hospital. Floodwaters backed up city water and sanitation systems, rendering the local resource unsafe to drink. With the help of the Guard’s water purification specialists, clean water was made available until tap water was again reliable.
When the call comes in and water is needed, Guardsmen accustomed to operating behind the scenes will make sure fresh H2O is pushed to the front. The call for water is, in essence, a call for life. Soldiers of the 132nd QM Co. will keep the water flowing.
| Date Taken: | 11.24.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 11.24.2014 17:21 |
| Story ID: | 148719 |
| Location: | DEVILS LAKE, NORTH DAKOTA, US |
| Web Views: | 99 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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