Managing Water Availability and Quality in an Increasingly Water Stressed Environment

Recent droughts focused attention on the fact that our future is endangered in many parts of the world. Our traditional sources of water are finite. Yet our population will grow and with it our demands for water to support agriculture, economic development and basic human needs. This can only make our economy more sensitive to drought. Moreover, climate trends suggest that water scarcity may become more common and more intense. Without solutions, our growth will ultimately be limited by water scarcity and droughts will have an impact more damaging than any traditional economic recession.

Certainly part of the solution is conservation and demand reduction by all users including industry. It is likely, however, that conservation and demand reduction can at best offset population and economic growth. It is likely that only the implementation of new technologies to advance reuse and recycling will ensure that water does not ultimately limit economic development. Advanced technologies will be necessary to enable wastes to be treated to an extent to allow greater water reuse and to upgrade poor water sources such as saline groundwaters and produced water. Implementation of these technologies in a manner that will not be equally damaging to the economy, however, will require significant advances in their energy efficiency, reliability and effectiveness.

The presentation will explore these topics, making the case for future needs and discuss some of the challenges and opportunities for technology development to address those needs.