Through key thematic areas, the IWA World Water Congress seeks to build bridges between science and practice of water management across all regions of the world
The IWA World Water Congress and Exhibition is a high-profile international event attracting thousands of water professionals and organisations from across the globe. Organised by the International Water Association (IWA), the strategic intentions for the congress are to engage with the dynamics of the water sector and its interfaces, including urbanisation, climate change and energy. In the previous years, the congress was held in Vienna, Beijing, Marrakech, Melbourne, Berlin and Paris. In 2010, the IWA partnered with the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA) and the Canadian Association on Water Quality (CAWQ) to hold the event in Montreal from September 19 – 24, 2010. The key topics discussed in Montréal were:
* The science and application of water management
* Water, climate and energy
* Cities of the future
* Managing utilities and their assets
* Securing new and traditional water resources for the future
* Water, ecosystems and catchments
* Water and health
The 3,758 water professionals gathered in Montréal comprised 2,396 delegates and 148 partners from 90 different countries. The delegates listened to 396 oral presentations and saw 527 poster presentations. They attended 42 workshops, 40 industry forums and four regional forums. There were 83 meetings organised by various water-related interest groups. More than 450 young water professionals (YWP) participated in the YWP program, reflecting a substantial rise in the popularity of the program compared to previous years.
The exhibition was made up of 198 exhibiting companies and organisations from 30 countries. More than 330 delegates attended technical tours of water and wastewater treatment plants in Montréal and nearly 300 people went on sightseeing tours organised as part of the event.
In his video address to the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition, the Chair of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, His Royal Highness, Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, called for a revolution in wastewater collection, treatment and reuse.
His message to IWA participants was clear: “Water must be fit for all human uses and ecosystems. Quality of water resources is a real concern. We extract massive amounts from rivers, lakes and aquifers and return it to our ecosystems full of waste from our industries, from our farms, from ourselves. We have to use less, reuse more, and create cascades of reuse rather than cascades of degradation. We must subject polluted water to either effective natural processes or appropriate treatment before returning it to the environment. Otherwise we will have no hope of enjoying clean water for a healthy world.”
Outstanding contributions
During the event, IWA awarded prizes for outstanding contributions to the water sector in various areas. The winner of the IWA Presidential Award for Global Vision was Professor Norihito Tambo for his vision and direction over 50 years in the sector.
The winners of the IWA Global Water Awards for lifetime achievement were Professor David Jenkins, Professor Emeritus at the University of California Berkeley, and Professor Blanca Jiménez Cisneros from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
The IWA Outstanding Service Award was presented to Professor Jiri Wanner from the Institute of Chemical Technology in the Czech Republic. The IWA Award for Outstanding Contribution to Water Management and Science was presented to Dr William T Muhairwe for his leadership of Uganda’s National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) over the past 12 years. The IWA Young Water Professionals award went to Rita Henderson, while the IWA Women in Water award went to Cassilda Teixeira de Carvalho.
The Superior Achievement and Global category winners (Grand and Honour) of the 2010 IWA Project Innovation Awards were announced and feted at a prestigious award dinner. Australia’s WaterSecure took the Superior Achievement award as overall winner and the Global prize for the Design category, for the Western Corridor Recycled Water (WCRW) Project. In 2005 South East Queensland (SEQ) was in the grip of the worst drought in the state’s recorded history, with the previous six years’ rainfall well below average. At the same time, the region continued to experience the fastest population growth in Australia, placing an unprecedented demand on the already dwindling water supplies.
The Western Corridor Recycled Water (WCRW) Project is diversifying the region’s water sources by providing a new source of pure water to the power stations, and in the future, will provide water to industry, agriculture and to Wivenhoe Dam to supplement drinking supplies when required.
The largest water recycling project in the Southern Hemisphere, the WCRW Project consists of more than 200 kilometres of large‐diameter underground pipeline, three world‐class advanced water treatment plants, 12 major pumping stations and nine balance tanks. The system has the capacity to produce up to 232 megalitres of purified water a day – around 40% of the region’s daily water needs.
As a less climate‐dependent source of water, purified water is a long‐term, sustainable water supply solution for South East Queensland. The project is also improving the health of its waterways and the environmentally significant Moreton Bay by reducing the amount of nutrients that would otherwise have been released into rivers.
The Global Winner for Applied Research was PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency, for its Variable Salinity Plant (VSP). As part of its continuous efforts to diversify its water sources, Singapore wanted to tap into potentially valuable urban fringe catchments. The conventional approach of constructing dams across these small canals can only support the continuous operation of very small water treatment plants due to low storage capacity, making it not economically viable. On the other extreme end, building high‐capacity plants to harvest the large quantities of runoff whenever it rains increases the yield, but the plants will be idling 85% of the time, resulting in extremely low plant utilisation. Hence, PUB, Singapore’s national water agency conceived an original idea of a variable salinity plant to harness water from estuarine catchments while balancing these two extremes.
The Variable Salinity Plant (VSP) is a 1.5MGD demonstration plant operated by PUB. By carefully designing the process control to operate over a wide range of operating pressure from 7 bar (freshwater) to 50 bar (seawater), the same set of membranes can switch between treating water of widely different salinities. The plant treats the surface run‐off that is stored in the canal behind an inflatable rubber weir when available and switches to treating seawater when the canal is dry, thus affording high plant utilisation. Being a hybrid plant, the VSP has a lower operating cost than a conventional seawater desalination plant as the overall average energy consumption of the plant is half that of seawater desalination plants. The plant has consistently produced high‐quality water that meets WHO guidelines and USEPA standards for drinking water.
Manila Water won the Global prize for the Operations /Management category with ‘The Manila Water experience: Reducing Manila’s water losses through multi-pronged approach.’ Twelve years ago, when Manila Water took over the operations of the government‐owned Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) in the East Zone of Metro Manila, the water network system was poorly managed and very inefficient. The network had deteriorated lines, as well as, widespread illegal connections, resulting to 63% systems losses or Non‐Revenue Water (NRW). Manila Water implemented a multi‐pronged NRW reduction strategy involving not just technical solutions but reorganisation and community partnership as well, cutting down water losses to 14% as of end 2009.
The Planning Global prize was won by Gold Coast Water (GCW) of Australia for its Four R’s Project. GCW is the local water authority of city of Gold Coast in South East Queensland, Australia. Over the past decade, GCW has directed a shift to more sustainable management of the city’s water, particularly wastewater and recycled water services and assets in response to pressure on water resources due to extended drought and rapid population growth. The 4Rs of sustainable water management – reduce, recycle, recover and release – form the basis of more sustainable management of Gold Coast city’s water resources.
The Global Grand Prize for Small Projects was won by Agbar for its ice pigging technology to clean potable water mains. Although drinking water standards throughout the UK are very high, the single most common quality complaint relates to discoloured water, which occurs when fine sediments in the distribution system are disturbed and go into suspension, ultimately arriving at the customers tap. Agbar, in conjunction with the University of Bristol, have developed a new technique for cleaning pipes using slush ice that overcomes the limitations of existing cleaning techniques, benefiting from ease of use, reduced costs, more efficient cleaning results, and less interruption to supply to customers. The project was one of the first in the world to use ice pigging as a commercially viable technique to remove sedimentary build‐up in a pipeline, and removed over 200 kilograms of fine sediment from 1.2 kilometres of 150-mm diameter pipe. Its success meant that the supply was unavailable for only eight hours in total, borehole pump efficiency improved due to less sedimentary build up at works, treatment plant efficiency improved as a result of lower suspended sediment in the incoming water supply, and ultimately capital spend was deferred at the works.
The next IWA World Water Congress and Exhibition will be held in Busan, South Korea from September 16–21, 2012.
H20 stand at IWA Montreal
