Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - November 2005
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Droughts in India – floods in New Orleans among topics at WEFTEC 2005
By Steve Davey, Publisher
At the recent Water Environment
Federation conference in
Washington, DC, a Stockholm
Water Prize winner outlined
realistic drinking water treatment solutions
for Third World countries. Ms.
Sunita Narain and the New Delhi based
Centre for Science and Environment
(CSE), a non-governmental organization,
shared the 2005 Stockholm Water Prize
for their efforts to fight top-down bureaucratic
control of resources. A major goal
was to empower women in water management
issues and rejuvenate traditional
rainwater harvesting.
She emphasized that it was management,
not scarcity of water, that is often
the problem in many parts of the world.
CSE is working to promote rainwater
harvesting as a solution to water scarcity.
This involves storing rain in millions
of storage systems – in tanks, ponds,
step-wells and even rooftops – and to
use it to recharge groundwater reserves
for irrigation and drinking water needs.
“Catch water where it falls!” she stated.
According to the CSE, the world
faces a critical challenge to improve the
productivity of rain-fed and marginalized
lands. Water can turn a large part
of the country’s currently parched lands
into productive lands, reduce poverty
and increase incomes where it is needed
the most. CSE has shown through its
advocacy that localized water management
is a cost-effective approach and
more importantly that local water management
can only be done through
community participation.
The work of CSE has highlighted
that water cannot become everybody’s
business until there are fundamental
changes in the ways we do business
with water. Policy will have to recognize
that water management, which
involves communities and households,
has to become the biggest cooperative
enterprise in the world. CSE believes
that the prevalent mindset that water
management is the exclusive responsibility
of government must give way to
participative and local management.
Ms. Narain told delegates that, in
India, drought is a permanent condition.
Increasingly the country has
turned to groundwater for new water
supplies and there are now over 22 million
well owners. What is most alarming,
she said, is that groundwater tables
are not being recharged and in many
cases are dropping alarmingly each
year.
She went on to say that, in India,
water systems need to be designed to
hold the monsoon rains, which are only
100 hours per year. On average one
hectare of land receives 1 million litres
of rainfall per year. In fact, as far back
as 5,000 years ago, Indian settlements
had rainwater retention systems which
essentially “harvested” flood waters.
WEF also organized a special session
on the environmental impact of
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Backed up
with startling images of the destruction,
Karen Gautreaux from the Louisiana
Department of Environmental Quality
(DEQ) presented some staggering statistics.
As a result of some 75 square
miles of land being flooded for weeks,
approximately 350,000 automobiles
and 66,000 boats have to be scrapped.
As well, some 22 million tones of
debris have to be disposed of.
Albert Hindrichs, also of the
Louisiana DEQ, outlined how Lake
Pontchartrain is recovering from the
floodwaters of Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita. The DEQ has sampled the water
in Lake Pontchartrain as well as the
floodwaters that were pumped into the
lake from the flooded areas of New
Orleans. The Department was encouraged
by the results because the only
contamination of concern was bacteria
related to the waste that was in the
floodwaters. As the water was pumped
into the lake, bacteria levels declined,
diminishing to levels similar to those of
unaffected areas. Because the volume
of water pumped out of the city back
into the lake was approximately 4 percent
of the total volume of the lake, the
floodwater quickly diluted into the
lake.
The Department also tested the toxicity
of the floodwater throughout
September, using aquatic toxicity tests.
The tests showed that all fish and 10 of
12 invertebrate test animals were able
to survive in 100 percent pumped-out
floodwater. Toxicity tests involve the
exposure of aquatic animals to a series
of concentrations of floodwater for 48
hours. High survival rates are an indication
of the absence of pollutants.
Based upon the large number of
samples from the lake and floodwaters
and because of the toxicity tests results,
the DEQ does not foresee any issues
with the fish, crabs, shrimp or any
other animals that inhabit the lake.
WEFTEC.05 drew 18,132 water
quality professionals from around the
world. The conference featured 111
technical sessions, 25 workshops, 11
interactive facility tours and 876
exhibiting companies using over
214,000 square feet of floor space.
WEFTEC 2006 will be held in Dallas
Texas, October 21-25.
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