New elements of water management

Abstract

Modern water management goes presently through difficult processes of adaptation to new tatgetsstipulated by the needs of sustainable development. The process of change requires constantwidening of necessary knowledge and activitiy of engineers and scientists dealing with watermanagement. New targets require more itegrated actions, involving also new subject areas that areonly indirectly connected with traditional water management issues. To these belongs, forexample, management of raw materials, products and residuals, problems of soil pollution andresulting chemical contamination of agricultural products, presence of contaminants in food,influencing helth of population. Simultaneously, traditional goals of water management must bealso be fulfilled while costs of maintenance and renovation of oldering water supply and sanitarysystems increase parallel with age of constructions.Sustainable develpment postulates require actions towards preservation and gradual improvementof water quality in local and regional surface- and groundwater reservoirs in all regions,protection of agricultural soils, forests and other ecological systems such as weltands, medows,rivers and lakes that constitute a base for maintaining biological diversity and, simultaneously, forfood production and recreation of population in villages and cities. It may be notted that there is ageneral trend to widen the role of scientists and engineers dealing with water management toadress other, less typical areas, such as management of residuals, protection of rawmaterials andhealth protection of population. New understanding is growing among scientists and populationthat residuals, often classified as Agarbage=, Apollution:or Asolid weaste= may also constitutenew valuable resnources, it may be visualized by following symmetrical equation:Pollution = lost resources = pollutionBeginning with consideration of pollution problems one will arrive to the problem oflost naturalresources. Starting with a problem of inefective use and lost natural resources, one will arrve tothe problem of environmental pollution.