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Did
you know?
Reverse osmosis is the finest water filtration method known. This process will
allow the removal of particles as small as ions from a solution. It is used
to purify water and remove salts and other impurities in order to improve the
color, taste or properties of the fluid. R.O. uses a membrane that is semi-permeable,
allowing the fluid that is being purified to pass through it, while rejecting
other ions and contaminants from passing.
This technology uses a process
known as crossflow to allow the r.o. membrane to continually clean itself. This
is the reason of why an r.o. element can last many years before clogging or
need replacement. This
water purification process requires a driving force to push the fluid through
the membrane, and the most common force is household water pressure or pressure
from a booster pump. The higher the pressure, the larger the driving force and
efficiency.
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Barriers
to quality management of water sources.
Due
to the pressures of increasing population and developing economy all over
the world, the present situation of water-quality management is far from
satisfactory. To enhance sustainability of water-quality-management systems,
in-depth research of the related barriers and the relevant mitigation
approaches is desired. When such studies are done, they are largely done
on a large scale level and are typically taken on by large government
oriented institutions such as the world health organization, the EPA or
the U.N. This article will take a look at the quality management barrier
studies in a moment.
First
we'll briefly talk about the obvious barriers to local and regional management
of water sources. Anytime talk rises of watershed management, source water
protection or quality issues the public has come to expect meetings to
be held with the eventual approval of more funding. Finance and funding
is increasingly becoming a barrier to the management of water sources.
Straightly put, the more we learn about our water the more we want to
make it safer, which usually costs more money. Further along these lines
are the limitations of pubic understanding of water quality issues, as
well as the competition for government funds and the risks involved in
financing public works in the bond markets. On a global level a true global
water crisis is fast emerging.
Although
the "global water crisis" tends to be viewed as a water quantity problem,
water quality is increasingly being acknowledged as a central factor in
the water crisis. Ironically, the fact that some five million people die
every year related to water-borne diseases, mostly women and young children,
was not enough to mobilize international action about water quality. It
is only since United Nations agencies (WMO, 1997), 1998 meetings of the
Commission on Sustainable Development, the General Assembly, and other
organizations began looking at the overall contribution of massively polluted
water to the global water crisis that the world has started to take water
quality seriously.
The
contribution of water quality to this crisis is mainly through the loss
of a wide variety of beneficial uses, including large-scale ecological
dysfunction and collapse, loss of economic opportunity and its role in
public health and poverty. Water quality is also intimately linked to
the issue of sustainable food production.
In China, where an attempt was made to calculate the overall cost of water
pollution to the national economy (Smil, 1996), the cost in 1990 was estimated
to be 0.5% of GDP or, in dollar terms, more than the value of all exports
from China in that year. Using data from Weng (1999) it is estimated that
in 1998 the proportion of surface water in China that is so grossly polluted
that it is unfit for any use is between 13 and 27% -- this in a country
with a current mean annual water deficit of some 40 bm3. It is significant
that many informed technical experts in this field are now of the opinion
that remediation of water quality is now at least, if not more, economical
than developing new sources of supply in many countries.
The water quality situation in developing countries is highly variable
reflecting social, economic and physical factors as well as state of development.
And while not all countries are facing a crisis of water shortage, all
have to a greater or lesser extent serious problems associated with degraded
water quality. In some countries these are mainly associated with rivers,
in others it is groundwater, and in yet others it is large lakes; in many
countries it is all three. Because the range of polluting activities is
highly variable from one country to another, and the nature of environmental
and socio-economic impacts is equally variable, there is no "one-size-fits-all"
solution. There are, however, some common denominators in the types of
actions that are required for sustainable solutions.
The
challenge for national and multilateral agencies, and the subject of this
paper, is how to carry out water quality control and remediation programs
that are cost-effective and sustainable. The key aspects of water quality
management are the technical, institutional, legal, financial and business
issues, which should be included in national water policies. We also examine
here the barriers to sustainable capacity development, especially as the
pace of development and scope of water quality problems almost always
grow faster than any ability to build and sustain in-country capacity.
Regrettably, many countries including many developed countries, entrust
data programs to agencies having data-collection as their primary mandate,
with the result that water quality data programs exhibit a high degree
of inertia and for which there are few identified users of the data.
The
consequence is that such data programs tend to be data-driven rather than
needs-driven. The usual outcome is that these programs become rapidly
outdated by failing to shift program priorities towards modern pollution
issues, are not subjected to periodic and critical technical review, are
not cost-effective, and produce data which are rarely used. Such programs
usually do not produce information that is useful for national planning,
for policy development, for investment targeting, or for regulatory purposes.
Water quality monitoring, as practiced in most developed countries, is
based on the premise that with enough data, a well designed program can
answer most types of water quality management issues.
This
has been referred to as a data-rich or data-driven approach in which the
objective is primarily to gather high quality data. This has recently
been challenged by the United States government which found that, despite
years of expensive data programs, one cannot tell whether the nation's
waters are getting better or worse. The consequence has been the realization
that these mainly chemistry-focused programs are expensive, focus on data
production rather than on data use, collect more data than is necessary,
often do not reflect the types of data that managers need, and can be
replaced by cheaper and more effective methods. The outcome in Canada
and the United States has been a substantial shrinkage of conventional
water quality data programs and an expansion of alternative approaches.
Regrettably, this expensive and often ineffective chemistry-focused approach
is the one now being adopted by developing countries and is being recommended
by international and multilateral organizations.
Most
developing countries are "data-poor" environments as well as being challenged
by economic restrictions. This, together with lack of sufficient technical
and institutional capacity and often a poor scientific knowledge base,
suggests that the conventional "western" approach to water quality monitoring
and management is not well suited to many if not most developing countries.
It is, therefore, timely to promote a new water quality paradigm that
is more suitable, affordable, and sustainable in developing countries.
The need for a new paradigm has been recognized in several parts of the
developing world during the "Vision" exercise carried out by the Global
Water Partnership and the World Water Council over the past two years.
Unfortunately,
this situation tends not to be recognized by institutions such as the
World Bank, UNDP and others, and in many ODA programs, which tend to take
for granted that what is needed is to reinforce existing programs and
to build capacity along conventional "western" lines. What is missing
is a critical appreciation of the profound shortcomings of conventional
approaches and a failure to encourage national and sub-national agencies
to re-appraise their programs relative to specific management needs for
data, and to take advantage of more sustainable and cost-effective ways
of doing business. Unfortunately, the current situation results in: loan
and ODA programs that focus on data programs in the more advanced developing
countries tend to reinforce existing inefficiencies, and in less advanced
developing countries, the effect is to reinforce aspirations for a "western
style" program that will lock the country into an expensive, usually unsustainable,
and technically inferior (relative to current alternatives) program.
As
examples of this situation, in a recent program of the World Bank in one
large developing country, "modernization" of monitoring was largely linked
to procurement of advanced equipment and laboratory infrastructure which
local experts say is unlikely to have much impact on the types of data
that are really needed for decision-making. The decisions appear to have
been largely driven by in-country technical staff for who advanced facilities
were out of reach and who had no responsibility for the larger issues
of program efficiency or relevancy.
In
contrast, a World Bank program in Mexico responded to the Mexican government's
desire to fundamentally restructure the national water program with the
result that water quality data program and related legal and institutional
change, was measurably more efficient and effective and was able to effect
a savings of 66% of the amount that the national agency originally requested
to extend its existing program (Ongley and Barrios, 1997). The solution
to this situation is a process now referred to as "modernization" of water
quality programs (Ongley, 1997, 1998). This addresses policy, institutional,
legal and technical components of water quality programs.
It also takes advantages of a large number of improvements in monitoring
and assessment technologies that reduce costs, increase efficiencies,
improve accuracy, and focus programs on meaningful data objectives. Because
multilateral agencies have not, generally, recognized the seriousness
of the data problem, even for their own lending programs, there remains
a lack of written practical guidelines for carrying out the modernization
process. Such funding problems continue to be a major barrier to improving
the water quality and thus, the quality of life to millions of women and
children across the world.
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