|
|
 |
(International Water Resources Association)
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.
|
|
