IWA

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.

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.

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”. 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.

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.

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

are falling and the virus begins to disappear from wastewater, sewage could help decide when it’s safe to inch back toward normality.

A new member of the IWA UK Committee is Rose Jolly, who works for Severn Trent as Innovation Ecosystems and Knowledge Manager.

Her role involves sourcing new technologies, best practice and knowledge from across the world through involvement in groups such as the World Water Innovation Fund. “As an IWA member I’ve already found the membership incredibly useful, in particular some of the webinars and materials regarding the Covid 19 outbreak have been a brilliant resource. Isle Utilities also recently set up a Covid-19 WhatsApp that I’m a part of. Through tools and networks like these we’ve learnt some great lessons from what others are doing around the world to tackle the same problems.”

Are you a member of the Institute of Water and keen to find out about water challenges and solutions worldwide? If so, there is an amazing opportunity just around the corner.

The International Water Association (IWA) World Water Congress and Exhibition will take place between the 9th and 14th you could be there! Rose joined the IWA UK committee in September 2019, and said “I’ve sat on the Institute of Water Midlands Area committee since 2014, was the Midlands Area Rising Star in 2017 and acted as Midlands Area Chair since 2018. The Institute of Water has been a huge support in the development of my career over the last seven years and I’m keen to now get more involved in the International Water Association to continue my career development. I also want to give back, and feel like the skills I have developed whilst sitting as the Midlands Area Chair will be directly applicable in my new role on the IWA UK committee. I recently took a sabbatical from work to lead a WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) project, constructing a water system for a village in rural Nepal. I’d really like to build on this experience to learn more about water management from an international perspective and I feel that sitting on the IWA committee is a great way to do this.”

In the last issue of the Magazine we featured Kirstin Watt from Scottish Water, who with a team of colleagues was organizing the 21st IWA Young Professionals conference in Cardiff in April. It won’t be a surprise to learn that the Conference didn’t take place in the planned format, but instead was converted into a series of fascinating and well supported webinars; a big ‘thank you’ to all who joined in. The webinars focused on the theme of ‘The S Word: Exploring Sustainability across the Water Sector’ and we hope that you found them both enjoyable and informative!

We are offering to fund places** for two

members to attend. One place is reserved for a Young Water Professional (under-35 or in the early stages of a water industry career); the other is open to any Institute of Water member. The successful candidates will be expected to produce a blog and social media content whilst in Copenhagen to share with other Institute of Water members. They will also be expected As always, feedback on your overall experience would be greatly appreciated as it helps us to plan our events going forward. Please don’t hesitate to email iwaukywp@gmail.com and let us know what you thought of the webinars, plus any additional questions you may have.

A huge thank you to our four keynote speakers who kindly joined us: Peter Davies CBE (Welsh Government Sustainable Futures, Commissioner 2011-2016), Dr Michael Singer (Cardiff University: Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director, Water Research Institute), Prof. Peter Kille (Cardiff University: Director of Technology, Bio-Initiatives Director, School of Biosciences) and Tony Harrington (Dwr Cymru Welsh Water: Director of Environment). The level of engagement with regard to the question and answer sessions reflected the high quality of the presentations.

You can view the webinars on the IWA Committee section of the IWater website www.instituteofwater.org. uk/our-area-committees/iwa-ukcommittee.

rescheduled for 7-9 April 2021 in Cardiff, so put the dates in your diary in anticipation of what is always an

May 2021* in Copenhagen, Denmark and

excellent event. to present at a local Institute of Water event on their return.

Form and, once completed, email it to info@instituteofwater.org.uk.

Closing date: 13 November 2020

* Note change of date ** (registration, travel and accommodation)