Semi-structured interviews with 47 key actors were conducted in Swedish water utilities on why Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) are or are not used. Important influencing aspects identified included organizational inertia, social capital, the national water sector and authorities. Divergent views of SD and indicators appear to hinder SDI initiatives. Possible explanations are that: (a) not all actors look at decision-making as the kind of rational process the focus on indicators implies, and (b), Swedish urban water systems are widely regarded as sustainable. The water sector itself and regulation are identified as the strongest potential drivers for increased use of SDIs. Full article

The purpose of this study is to provide an integrated analysis of water distribution on Maui and the cross-sectoral impacts of policies and regulations aimed at rejuvenating and sustaining the deep-rooted culture on the island. Since the water diversion system was implemented in 1876 on the island of Maui, there has been contention among local interest groups over the right way to manage and allocate this precious resource. There is also concern over the availability of the precious resource in the long term, as the demand for water is expected to exceed the potential supply of water on Maui by 2020. This paper analyzes various long run scenarios of policy options presently being discussed on Maui. By collaborating with local experts, business leaders, and community members, to develop a tool that facilitates policy formulation and evaluation, informed decisions can then be made by the local community to ensure sustainable development. Full article

The impact of arsenic on human health has led its drinking water MCL to be drastically reduced from 50 to 10 ppb. Consequently, arsenic levels in many water supply sources have become critical. This has resulted in technical and operational impacts on many drinking water treatment plants that have required onerous upgrading to meet the new standard. This becomes a very sensitive issue in the context of water scarcity and climate change, given the expected increasing demand on groundwater sources. This work presents a case study that describes the development of low-cost techniques for efficient arsenic control in drinking water. The results obtained at the Manteigas WTP (Portugal) demonstrate the successful implementation of an effective and flexible process of reactive filtration using iron oxide. At real-scale, very high removal efficiencies of over 95% were obtained. Full article

In the early 1990s the countries of Central Asia started their transformation to a market economy. Uzbekistan is in the throes of change and facing a huge restructuring task and a need to improve governance. Decades of central bureaucratic allocation of natural resources left national bureaucrats with little capacity to formulate their own sustainable policies. Lack of inclusive, long term oriented policies and mechanisms in management of common pool resources brought catastrophic results in the past. The study reveals that implanting a top-down quota policy has positive effects on a larger public. However it may become a threat to the long term environmental sustainability. Full article

Water is today considered to be a vital and limited resource due to industrial development and population growth. Developing appropriate water treatment techniques, to ensure a sustainable management, represents a key point in the worldwide strategies. By removing both organic and inorganic species using techniques based on coupling membrane processes and appropriate complexing agents to bind pollutants are very important alternatives to classical separation processes in water treatment. Supported Liquid Membrane (SLM) and Complexation Ultrafiltration (CP-UF) based processes meet the sustainability criteria because they require low amounts of energy compared to pressure driven membrane processes, low amounts of complexing agents and they allow recovery of water and some pollutants (e.g., metals). A more interesting process, on the application point of view, is the Stagnant Sandwich Liquid Membrane (SSwLM), introduced as SLM implementation. It has been studied in the separation of the drug gemfibrozil (GEM) and of copper(II) as organic and inorganic pollutants in water. Obtained results showed in both cases the higher efficiency of SSwLM with respect to the SLM system configuration. Indeed higher stability (335.5 vs. 23.5 hours for GEM; 182.7 vs. 49.2 for copper(II)) and higher fluxes (0.662 vs. 0.302 mmol·h^-1·m^-2 for GEM; 43.3 vs. 31.0 for copper(II)) were obtained by using the SSwLM. Concerning the CP-UF process, its feasibility was studied in the separation of metals from waters (e.g., from soil washing), giving particular attention to process sustainability such as water and polymer recycle, free metal and water recovery. The selectivity of the CP-UF process was also validated in the separate removal of copper(II) and nickel(II) both contained in synthetic and real aqueous effluents. Thus, complexation reactions involved in the SSwLM and the CP-UF processes play a key role to meet the sustainability criteria. Full article

A groundwater mound (or pressure mound) is defined as a volume of fluid dominated by viscous flow contained within a sediment volume where the dominant fluid flow is by Knudsen Diffusion. High permeability self-sealing groundwater mounds can be created as part of a sustainable urban drainage scheme (SUDS) using infiltration devices. This study considers how they form, and models their expansion and growth as a function of infiltration device recharge. The mounds grow through lateral macropore propagation within a Dupuit envelope. Excess pressure relief is through propagating vertical surge shafts. These surge shafts can, when they intersect the ground surface result, in high volume overland flow. The study considers that the creation of self-sealing groundwater mounds in matrix supported (clayey) sediments (intrinsic permeability = 10^–8 to 10^–30 m³ m^–2 s^–1 Pa^–1) is a low cost, sustainable method which can be used to dispose of large volumes of storm runoff (<20→2,000 m³/24 hr storm/infiltration device) and raise groundwater levels. However, the inappropriate location of pressure mounds can result in repeated seepage and ephemeral spring formation associated with substantial volumes of uncontrolled overland flow. The flow rate and flood volume associated with each overland flow event may be substantially larger than the associated recharge to the pressure mound. In some instances, the volume discharged as overland flow in a few hours may exceed the total storm water recharge to the groundwater mound over the previous three weeks. Macropore modeling is used within the context of a pressure mound poro-elastic fluid expulsion model in order to analyze this phenomena and determine (i) how this phenomena can be used to extract large volumes of stored filtered storm water (at high flow rates) from within a self-sealing high permeability pressure mound and (ii) how self-sealing pressure mounds (created using storm water infiltration) can be used to provide a sustainable low cost source of treated water for agricultural, drinking, and other water abstraction purposes. Full article

This is a defining moment for the Great Lakes St Lawrence region, with the opportunity to renovate the regime for ecosystem improvement, protection and sustainability. The binational Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was first signed in 1972. The outcome of a 2007 review of the Agreement by government and citizens, resulted in a broad call for and revisions to the Agreement, so that it can once again serve as a visionary document driving binational cooperation to address long-standing, new and emerging Great Lakes environmental issues in the 21st century. A prescription for renegotiating the Agreement to generate a revitalized and sustainable future mandates that science inform contemporary public policy, third Party Mediation presses for and coordinates a deliberate negotiation, and inclusive discourse and public engagement be integral through the process. Full article

The search for water sustainability requires not only a combination of technical and managerial responses, but also firm action against socioeconomic injustices and political inequalities. The recognition of the politicised nature of water problems deserves particular attention in areas marred by long-term trends of environmental degradation and social exclusion. A case study of the Baixada Fluminense, an urbanised wetland in the Metropolitan Area of Rio de Janeiro, illustrates the challenge to reverse unsustainable practices in situations where water problems have been politically and electorally exploited. The research made use of an interdisciplinary approach to assess past and present initiatives that have attempted, but systematically failed, to restore river ecology and improve water services. The empirical results have important implications for water policy making and urban planning. Full article

Soil water potential is a soil property affecting a large variety of bio-physical processes, such as seed germination, plant growth and plant nutrition. Gradients in soil water potential are the driving forces of water movement, affecting water infiltration, redistribution, percolation, evaporation and plants’ transpiration. The total soil water potential is given by the sum of gravity, matric, osmotic and hydrostatic potential. The quantification of the soil water potential is necessary for a variety of applications both in agricultural and horticultural systems such as optimization of irrigation volumes and fertilization. In recent decades, a large number of experimental methods have been developed to measure the soil water potential, and a large body of knowledge is now available on theory and applications. In this review, the main techniques used to measure the soil water potential are discussed. Subsequently, some examples are provided where the measurement of soil water potential is utilized for a sustainable use of water resources in agriculture. Full article