OPENING ADDRESS TO THE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON WATER POLLUTION RESEARCH
BINYANEI HAOOMA - JERUSALEM - JUNE 19, 1972
PROFESSOR HILLEL I. SHUVAL
Conference President
CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE IN WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Since the first Conference of the International Association on Water Pollution
Research a decade ago in London, our organization has truly circled the globe, having
held conferences in Tokyo, Munich, Prague, San Francisco and Hawaii, and now
completing the cycle here in Jerusalem. In many ways this is symbolic since Jerusalem,
one of the world's most ancient cities, has struggled to solve problems of water for some
three thousand years. Here one can find the remains of marvellous ancient water
engineering works side by side with the most modern developments in water technology.
Israle is mainly a semi-arid country, but the vision of plentiful flowing water sources has
been echoed from the earliest of times. The prophet Isaiah yearned: ".. . for in the
wilderness shall water break forth and there shall be streams in the desert..." (Isaiah 35,
6).
A few kilometers from this building where we sit today, the water engineers of King
Hezekiah some 2,700 years ago, laid out a complex subterranean water supply tunnel dug
in solid rock, bringing living water from the Gihon spring into the walled city of
Jerusalem. This water supply tunnel functions to this day. The crowning glory of the
ancient Israeli water engineers of two thousand years ago was the construction of an
intricate system of aqueducts, tunnels and siphons bringing water to the city over a
distance of seventy kilometers with some two-hundred thousand cubic meters of capacity
in storage reservoirs. Following in this ancient tradition of water engineering, modern
Israeli engineers have drilled thousands of wells, built reservoirs and have transported
water by aqueduct and pipeline hundreds of kilometers from the Jordan River in the
north to the parched deserts of the south, fulfilling the vision of Isaiah of bringing
streams of water to the desert — to make it bloom.
The problem that we shall be dealing with at this Conference is the protection and
maintenance of the quality of our vital water resources. A paradox of modern
technological society is that more and more water is required as populations grow and the
standard of living increases, resulting in greater and greater withdrawals from ground and
surface sources. With the growing urban and industrial use of water, greater amounts of
organic and inorganic wastes are spewed back into the water sources so that less and less
pure water becomes available at the quality required as a result of the self-destructive
process of pollution.
By the time one of Europe's major rivers, flowing from its sources in the mountains
reaches the sea, its entire flow may be almost wholly made up of water used once or more
times by upstream cities. Six million people draw upon this river as their main source of
water supply. How long may we continue at this pace? Will all of the surface waters of
the world eventually face this fate?
xix
CONFERENCE ON WATER POLLUTION RESEARCH
BINYANEI HAOOMA - JERUSALEM - JUNE 19, 1972
PROFESSOR HILLEL I. SHUVAL
Conference President
CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE IN WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Since the first Conference of the International Association on Water Pollution
Research a decade ago in London, our organization has truly circled the globe, having
held conferences in Tokyo, Munich, Prague, San Francisco and Hawaii, and now
completing the cycle here in Jerusalem. In many ways this is symbolic since Jerusalem,
one of the world's most ancient cities, has struggled to solve problems of water for some
three thousand years. Here one can find the remains of marvellous ancient water
engineering works side by side with the most modern developments in water technology.
Israle is mainly a semi-arid country, but the vision of plentiful flowing water sources has
been echoed from the earliest of times. The prophet Isaiah yearned: ".. . for in the
wilderness shall water break forth and there shall be streams in the desert..." (Isaiah 35,
6).
A few kilometers from this building where we sit today, the water engineers of King
Hezekiah some 2,700 years ago, laid out a complex subterranean water supply tunnel dug
in solid rock, bringing living water from the Gihon spring into the walled city of
Jerusalem. This water supply tunnel functions to this day. The crowning glory of the
ancient Israeli water engineers of two thousand years ago was the construction of an
intricate system of aqueducts, tunnels and siphons bringing water to the city over a
distance of seventy kilometers with some two-hundred thousand cubic meters of capacity
in storage reservoirs. Following in this ancient tradition of water engineering, modern
Israeli engineers have drilled thousands of wells, built reservoirs and have transported
water by aqueduct and pipeline hundreds of kilometers from the Jordan River in the
north to the parched deserts of the south, fulfilling the vision of Isaiah of bringing
streams of water to the desert — to make it bloom.
The problem that we shall be dealing with at this Conference is the protection and
maintenance of the quality of our vital water resources. A paradox of modern
technological society is that more and more water is required as populations grow and the
standard of living increases, resulting in greater and greater withdrawals from ground and
surface sources. With the growing urban and industrial use of water, greater amounts of
organic and inorganic wastes are spewed back into the water sources so that less and less
pure water becomes available at the quality required as a result of the self-destructive
process of pollution.
By the time one of Europe's major rivers, flowing from its sources in the mountains
reaches the sea, its entire flow may be almost wholly made up of water used once or more
times by upstream cities. Six million people draw upon this river as their main source of
water supply. How long may we continue at this pace? Will all of the surface waters of
the world eventually face this fate?
xix