Water: Ripples Spread out from Israel

My visit to WATEC, the 8th International Exhibition and 5th International Conference on Water Technologies and Environmental Control, held at Tel Aviv's Fair Grounds in October 2015, promised to revise that famous phrase. The conference motto ― "Water Efficiency ― Wisdom in Every Drop" ― clearly captured the upbeat note and expanding horizon of Israel's water industry.

It was really enlightening, and I must admit, heartwarming to see so many people, especially women, and so many products gathering to further the purification and more efficient use of water. It was also wonderful to learn that despite the politics, when you get down to substantive needs, so many countries were happy to cooperate with Israel to bring advanced technologies back home with them. This included China as well as Mexico, California and the United States. As a matter of fact, despite the acts of terrorism in Jerusalem and fears of its spreading throughout Israel, 8,000 representatives from all over the world attended the exhibit and lecture series.

While walking around the technical exhibits I learned how familiar words ― innovation, sustainability, management, financing, purification, reverse osmosis and so forth ― were used in the real world of water. For the first time in my life, I came face-to-face with portable purification vehicles capable of reaching remote communities and villages in crisis, to demonstrations of "digester and biogas treatment" and "sludge dewatering" systems, to compost purification vessels, to pails of chemicals for disinfecting fruits and vegetables after harvesting. There were electrodes and devices for removing rock particles from water systems as well as wireless solutions, connected to the Internet, meant to upgrade existing water monitoring systems at low cost. Economic efficiency and health concerns were firmly coupled with ecological soundness among the inventors, engineers and producers involved in creating, improving and monitoring water and waste systems. I felt like Alice in a new-age Wonderland, with the Cheshire Cat resembling lab technicians more than furry animals. I had a great time among these fascinating toys.

With respect to drinking water and plastic: - according to Yossi Yaacoby, Chairman of WATEC Israel 2015, tap water throughout the western world is clean and drinkable. So, forget those plastic bottles and open the faucet just about everywhere..

But water, like so much in life, is not just what we think it is: a liquid. Beyond its obvious necessity and physical context (weather, geology, piping, etc.), water also means economics, politics and administration, as well as social status, with a large dose of history thrown in. This was brought home very concisely by three speakers from Brazil, Tashkent and China, respectively.

I begin with what was for me a shocking revelation, although one to be expected. Prof. Gesner Oliviera, an economist and consultant for the Brazilian government, stated that the water and sanitation tragedy affecting northern Brazil, a region with sufficient water and rainfall, was affected by culture and economics. By culture he meant that people were more willing to pay for drinking water than for sewage treatment; by economics he revealed that the amount of water needed by a community was estimated according to average income: wealthier communities need more water; poorer communities less. One method considered to better manage the imbalance was to pay people to reduce consumption, although this has been found to be very costly.