THE BENEFITS OF IWA MEMBERSHIP In the Spring edition of the IWater Magazine we updated you on the changes to the International Water Association’s UK Committee, which is a sub-committee of the Institute of Water, and promised to provide regular updates on the IWA. In this edition we explore some of the benefits that IWA membership and involvement can bring through its Specialist Groups and access to cutting-edge science. Specialist Groups For those of you not familiar with the IWA, it has members from over 140 countries, united by a professional interest in water and an ambition to see it used sustainably and managed equitably. One of the great strengths of the IWA is its Specialist Groups, where professionals from all over the world can share ideas, innovations and good practice through newsletters, webinars and conferences. Across the 50 groups there’s one for pretty much every interest and specialism in water. Many of them are led by UK members, and have a strong UK involvement. One of the most active is the Water Loss Group, in which our own Vice President Engineering Jo Parker is a leading voice.
The Water Loss Specialist Group started life as a Task Force with the specific job of looking at Water Loss Performance Indicators. When the first Global Water Loss Conference was held in Lemesos, Cyprus in 2002, it attracted 107 international and local delegates and became the first of a series of regular Global Water Loss Conferences. With each successive conference the delegate numbers increased and the group outgrew its Task Force status and became a stand-alone Specialist Group. The Global Water Loss Conference is held on average every two years, and the last Conference in Cape Town in 2018 attracted over 500 delegates. It’s hoped that there could be a UK conference in 2021, and with the water companies in England and Wales having committed to halving leakage by 2050 (and with challenging interim targets for 2024) it will be an opportunity to find out how other countries are addressing unacceptably high levels of leakage.
Covid-19 response By the time this gets into print it’s impossible to know where we shall be with Covid-19, but it’s certain that there will be an ongoing impact on water companies’ operations as they work hard to maintain standards of service in the face of staff absence through illness or self-isolation, and the need to minimize risk to employees and the public. These are challenges faced by water undertakers the world over, and the IWA is dedicating part of its website to freely sharing experience and the latest science. Jo said “I have been a member of the IWA for around 15 years and have been an active member of the Water Loss Specialist Group (and its predecessor task force) for most of that time. It’s a fantastic group for meeting like-minded people all over the world and has been responsible for developing tools and techniques to help water loss specialists everywhere”.
6
instituteofwater.org.uk
KWR Water, a Dutch research institution which aims to build bridges between science and practice, has demonstrated that the SARS-CoV-2 (corona) virus’s RNA is actually detectable in sewage samples. This is the continuation of its work in sewer sampling for detecting traces of illicit drugs, such as opioids, as part of strategies to inform public policies.
SARS-CoV-2 can be detected in untreated wastewater within days of infection and as much as two weeks before a person becomes ill enough to seek medical care, if indeed symptoms ever materialize at all. Therefore sewer monitoring can illustrate the timing and scale of outbreaks that are currently difficult to visualize because of a general lack of human testing. When Covid-19 appeared in Italy, KWR began collecting samples in several wastewater treatment plants in the Netherlands. They analysed the wastewater at a number of treatment plants in the Netherlands, including Amsterdam, Schiphol Airport and some smaller plants. In early February no traces were found, but on 5 March, the first indications appeared (the first cases by health professionals were confirmed on 27 February). These became even more evident in the samples taken on 16 March. KWR’s Chief Executive Dragan Savic said “The strength of sewage surveillance is that we can monitor large (sub) populations with a single sample and link that information to the data obtained from health professionals to monitor the evolution of the epidemic in the community and inform decision making on how to most effectively mitigate the impact of the epidemic and distribute limited resources (i.e., human and material).” Teams in the United States are pursuing similar studies, and closer to home Cranfield University is also making a significant contribution to the science. A team led by Dr Zhugen Yang, an academic at Cranfield’s Water Science Institute, is working to develop a rapid and low-cost paper-based test for the coronavirus in wastewater treatment plants. This has the potential to serve as an early monitoring tool to help local governments and agencies to decide effective courses of action. For example, it could be deployed at a local level to give officials some measure of comfort in reopening schools and businesses. If cases
