the last paragraph of you comments struck me, I recently read about how we sent money to Bangladesh or another of that tier of countries to help them drill wells for clean drinking water. Worked like a charm, except that no one noticed the water was laced with arsenic, so people are dying of arsenic poisoning rather than cholera and dysentery. -- as all to typical..
great western civilization comes in, looks at a situation (ie, people dying of water born bacteria,) and says "Look at these backward,(un educated, non-scientific, what ever) people, don't they realize, that ground water like the river they drink from will get contaminated every time it rains.. Well leave it to good old american know how, we'll have these people drinking well water in no time!
i suspect that a long time ago, the local people figured out, that every one who drank well water got sick and died, but only 20 or 30% of the people who drank river water did.. an they took there chances with dysentary.
So what have we done? we have in many cases forced "technological" improvement on people, that really didn't improve their lives, and oh, by they way, even though its we were only willing to give money to dig wells as a sourse of improved water supply, and now we know it doesn't work, well too bad, but the third world people still owe us for the cost the money we "loaned" them to dig the wells.
I don't think we (americans) are cruel or hard-hearted, but i do think we often rush into a place and impose our "solutions" that others have to pay for. I think that local people know their local problems very well, and can come up with local low tech solutions that will work for them, better than we can. but we often don't allow that. we rush in, and we are trying to be good, trying to be helpful, but... maybe, what works best for us, is not the best solution.
I think sometimes we are our own worst enemies. and i think the example you sited TEd is a perfect example of our going in, coming up with a "solution" that doesn't really work..
What the town really needed was a good sess pool system, the would help keep the river cleaner. or a simple clorination plant, to help purify the river.. i suspect, there were local tales about how health the river water was.. and these local tales re-inforced drinking the river water over wells, which were inhabited by demons, or some such nonsense to our scientific ears.. but the what ever the means, the local population had learned that well water was bad.. and right they were!
