One Man’s Mission: Clean Water for All

Water. A necessity for all forms of life, covering 70% of Earth’s surface. We drink it, we bathe in it, we clean our home with it. Living on Marco Island, water surrounds us. With our easy access to it, it is hard to fathom that to this day, one out of every four humans on this planet lacks access to clean drinking water. Let alone bathe and clean with it. That is 2.1 billion people globally who do not have access to potable water.

According to WHO (World Health Organization) and UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), a report published in August 2025, this staggering statistic shines a light on a much larger problem than we realize as we go about our day-to-day lives. Perhaps because water is so readily accessible to us, we take it for granted.

Why? With all the knowledge and technology we have nowadays. With the multitude of programs and organizations wanting to and delivering aid. Why is there STILL such a need?

In another report that may shock you, the ‘21/’22 GLAAS Report by UN Water and WHO, the answer is clear and simple: Sufficiency: A lack of human resources is constraining water service delivery. When asked about overall sufficiency of human resources for drinking water, fewer than 30% of countries reported having 75% of the human resources needed.

The survey went on to talk about the additional human resources needed for policy development, planning, monitoring, management, construction of facilities, and community mobilization, and the lack of capacity to fill these needs.

There is one Marco Island resident who is determined to change this. Driven by seeing a need from a young age, he has co-founded a water well drilling, training, and consulting company, HydroLOGICA. This company has created the processes and systems for proper training for anyone across the globe to correctly and safely maintain and operate a water well drilling rig – even in the densest of jungles or driest of plains.

To fully understand HydroLOGICA and its origin, we must first get to know the man behind it: Michael Montgomery.

Michael’s parents met in San Francisco during World War II. In the last year of the war, his father, having finished engineering school, was a Commander on a ship. His mother came from California and settled in Atlanta, Georgia, once they got married. Soon, they had Michael’s sister in 1950, and 18 months later, he joined the world.

Sadly, his Electrical Engineer father prioritized the bottle, leading to a divorce and tragically taking his own life.

Now in a single-parent home, Michael was a mischievous child and got into trouble whenever he could. In the eighth grade, an opportunity that would change the trajectory of his life presented itself: Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia.

Solid male influences helped him tremendously. These role models instilled character and laid the groundwork for a lifetime of hard work and service to others. Michael finished High School and started to eye up what was to come next.

He chose Tennessee Tech after weighing the option of Georgia Tech, where his father had gone, and some friends. He finished, not at the top of his class, but finished nonetheless with a degree in Civil Engineering.

Now he needed a job. His brother-in-law happened upon an advertisement in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday paper, in the sports section, looking for driller trainees on an offshore oil rig (A driller refers to a specialized technician who operates and supports the machinery involved in oil drilling). He sent a resume, and they sent an airplane ticket to Houston for an interview!

At that time, he had already accumulated vast work experiences in manual labor, welding, construction, demolition, and had no fear of heights. These combined traits made him an ideal candidate and he was hired. Promptly after, he was given another plane ticket to Singapore.

He shared living quarters with others in Singapore. The rig they were to work on, the Discoverer III, was offshore in Rangoon, Burma. At the airport, waiting to clear customs for a charter helicopter to get to the rig, he had his first experience with people not having clean water.

“They did not have potable water at the international airport in Burma, and the whole place smelled like sewage. Since that time, I have seen this in many countries. So many people without water.” Looking back to that first time, Michael had pledged to himself, “I knew if I had my chance, I’d try to help these people.”

This essential need would remain in the back of his head throughout his career.

Janet nodded towards her husband and added, “From early on, Michael has always had a philanthropic heart.” She recounted that he had saved up his money from working on the rigs in Singapore and other places before returning to Atlanta. Michael had purchased three inexpensive fixer-upper houses next door to each other, in the area of what would soon become the MARTA Railway in Decatur. “I was doing financial planning, but on the weekends, I was helping a friend sell ceiling fans, and he came into the store. That’s how we met and right away I recognized that he was more motivated than any man I'd ever met. Like he always seemed to have a lot of good work ethic. He got things done and had plans for his life.”

Michael and Janet got married in 1980 and went to Dallas for a while before they ventured to Scotland for what would be seven years.

“We left for Scotland with one child and came back with four!” They laughed.

During his time in Aberdeen, Scotland, Michael started WEST Training & Consulting, which would eventually become WEST Engineering.

Relocating to Houston in 1988, which was a better place for his business, as Houston is integral to the economy since any country that uses oil has a representative there.

Michael’s innate need to have procedures and systems for everything led to global notoriety when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout occurred in 2010. Having continually written regulations for the Mineral Management Services, fearing that it would only take one major blowout for oil companies to finally turn an eye to blowout prevention equipment, he began to receive numerous calls from international news agencies for comment.

“I remember hearing of that incident in the news, and then it was everywhere.” Oil flowed into the ocean and created an environmental disaster for 87 days.

Janet added, “All of a sudden, the spotlight was on WEST Engineering because Michael had written all those papers and they were the world’s experts in blowout prevention equipment.”

“We ended up getting hired by Transocean, and we were involved right from the beginning when the wells blew out, trying to cap the well, and stop the flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.” WEST continued with the retrieval of the equipment and performance of a post-mortem to see exactly what and why had happened. Months in New Orleans undergoing research and creating reports translated into an 11-minute summary by U.S. Chemical Safety Board.

After this incident, WEST Engineering continued to grow until it was sold in 2012 to Lloyd’s Register, a certifying authority in London. Interestingly, the company started in the same coffee shop as Lloyd’s insurance. One could sit in the shop and see their goods being piled onto a boat and sail out. Sometimes the boats would come back, sometimes they wouldn’t, hence the insurance company was born. The first rule they made and enforced was a ‘load line’ so one can visually see if the boat is being overloaded or not.

For Montgomery, WEST selling to Lloyd’s was originally the first thought of retirement. Little did he know that he was about to enter a whole new world. A world centered on providing access to clean water for all.

Stay tuned to the Coastal Breeze News for Part Two of One Man’s Mission: Clean Water for All.

Sources: https://www.who.int/news/item/26-08-2025-1-in-4-people-globally-still-lack-access-to-safe-drinking-water---who--unicef

https://www.unwater.org/sites/default/files/2022-12/GLAAS_2022_REPORT.pdf