Forthcoming Event

· INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON "WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT", 6-8 FEBRUARY 2008, NAGPUR (INDIA)

· Objective:

With the growing requirements of water for diverse purposes, water is becoming a critical and scarce natural resource. The planning of utilisation of water resources is not merely a question of ensuring availability of water in the right quantity at the right time for diverse purposes, but also one of ensuring the right quality, for the use in view. While drinking water needs to meet fairly stringent quality standards, water quality is equally important for agricultural and industrial uses. In recent times, on account of the increase in urbanisation and industrialisation and use of fertilisers and pesticides in agriculture, there is an ever-increasing threat to the quality of both surface and ground waters.

River waters have often become waste receptacles, due to increasing flow volumes of effluents harmful to both quality and ecology.

The fact that the major part of the total world pollution load is generated within developed urban areas makes the issue of sanitation and controlled waste-handling in large cities of developed regions, a key issue of global format. This scenario raises the question as to what extent our present wastewater treatment solutions are realistic alternatives for developing countries. A further aspect of this problem is that the traditional sewage systems designed and built in the late nineteenth century are still in use in many cities and are in most cases poorly maintained, causing leakage to groundwater. Costs of replacement or rehabilitation are often prohibitively high. The dramatic expansion of urbanized areas, which has been witnessed over the last few decades, is likely to continue in most countries of the world. Such, often unplanned, growth leading to the emergence of conurbation and mega cities pose a threat to both the availability and quality of surface and groundwater resources. These threats are both unprecedented and of immense scale when viewed from political, social and economic perspectives.

In view of the increased demand for water and decrease in its availability, concern for water quality has become a matter of urgency.

Keeping the above in view, the Central Board of Irrigation and Power, New Delhi, in association with the Geographical Committee of International Water Resources Association (India) is organizing the Third International Conference on "Water Quality Management" from 6-8 February 2008 at Nagpur. The conference will appraise the problems of water quality by not only examining the issues affecting the various water quality parameters, methods of sampling and analysis as well as evaluation and formulation of standards and development of indicators for water quality for various consumptive uses but also the application of modern techniques such as remote sensing and GIS for monitoring water quality changes, and modelling, etc.

The conference is being co-sponsored by the International Water Resources Association.

· Conference Topics

1. Water quality management.
· Recycling and use of marginal quality waters for irrigation.
· Special applications and emerging technologies, isotope techniques to study efficacy of waste water recycling.
· Surface and ground water quality monitoring and optimization of network.
· Policies for promoting use of poor quality waters including drainage effluents and other waste waters for various uses.
· Case studies

2. System analysis and computing in water quality management.
· Convection diffusion models for transport of pollutants in water.
· Numerical modelling for diffusion models in groundwater pollution.
· Instrumentation, control and automation.
· Use of remote sensing, GIS and nuclear techniques for monitoring water quality changes.

3. Impact of industrial development and intensive agriculture (non-point source pollution) on the quality of stream flow and groundwater.
· Water pollution - physico-chemical measurement, analysis and control of water.

4. Community participation in water quality programme and legal and social aspects of water quality.
· Role of NGO's.

5. Review and improvement of standards for regulatory approaches: concentration limits, treatment standards, measures against pollution of land and water resources and evolution of guidelines.

6. Ground water resources, development and management
· National and international perspective.
· Modelling of water flow and contaminant transport in the saturated and unsaturated zones in relation to ecology.
· Physical and hydro-mechanical processes, especially the dynamic aspects, in interface zones and their implication for ecology.
· Methodology for identification of hydrological and biotic parameters and the design, operation and applicability of field monitoring networks.
· Economic analysis of groundwater contamination, e.g., benefits of clean - up and prevention.
· Isotope techniques for studying groundwater recharge, interconnection between surface water-groundwater and aquifer, efficacy of artificial recharge etc.
· Case studies with respect to ecologically sound management under various land use practices (presentation of wetlands, forestry, agriculture, etc.)

7. Surface water resources development and management.
· Hydrological and meteorological inputs
· Methodological and source tracing studies
· Physical and hydro-chemical processes, especially the dynamic aspects, in interface zones and their implication for ecology
· Identifying and measuring impacts
· Ecological and source controls
· Integrated management and planning
· Case studies

8. Drinking water contamination: approaches and applications.
· Emerging issues in drinking water risk assessment in developed and developing countries including use of computer models
· Health effects from drinking water contamination: epidemiology/ microbial/chemical and toxicology and remediation
· Source of salinity in coastal and inland aquifers using isotope techniques
· Policy analysis and risk management of drinking water contamination
· Multipathway exposure assessment
· Causes and processes of contamination - surface/ground water, use of isotope methods
· Treatment processes and distribution systems
· Legislative, regulatory, policy, and basic management aspects
· Hygiene Education

9. International Issues: Cooperation, trans-border concerns.

The bulletin for the conference is available at www.cbip.org