Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
markedly higher rates, resulting in massive public protests and consequent
backing down of the government's commitment to permit the private firm
to change proper rates. Examples are described in
32
, which reviews the very
unsuccessful experiences of the three major European private-sector firms
in this field of business as of August 2006, and in
37
, which reviews
a similar recent experience in the city of Cochabamba in Bolivia.
The suggestion here is that the private-sector firms can be valuably utilized for
filling the skills gap, both for turnkey projects, which may include financing as
well as design/construction and for only O&M, but with provision for continuing
subsidization by the government but at a level that progressively decreases over
a period of years with a corresponding gradual increase in rates.
Integrated Economic-cum-Environmental Development
Planning (IEEDP)
The programs already noted for making optimal use of water resources, valuable
as those are, may be criticized for planning for effective water resource utilization
independently of other precious environmental resources — “obviously” the best
approach would be use of planning mechanics in which the target is optimum
utilization of all precious environmental resources including freshwater resources.
Information on how to do this is given later in this chapter on “Development
Planning for DCs.”
WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
Circa mid-the twentieth century, it was still practical in most countries to
design and build dams/reservoirs on streams for intended single-purpose
uses such as UWSSs, but over the next half-century, it become increasingly
necessary, because of increasing growth of population and industry, to design
the reservoirs for multipurpose uses (i.e., for all beneficial water uses in the
project's service area). But also by year 2000, water resources experts were
beginning to realize that continuing further growth was resulting in serious
water shortages conflicts between provinces (or states) of individual countries
and between different countries. Hence, the problem now facing the world
in water shortage regions is how to resolve these conflicts by (1) making
much more effective use of the limited water resources, and (2) reaching
agreements between countries utilizing the some limited resources on fair
allocation of the limited resources. In the DC regions, initial steps are underway
on how to reach agreements on fair allocation, including especially regions
in the Middle East and in the semiarid regions in Asia (such as the region of
India/Pakistan/Bangladesh). Excellent evaluation of this problem on a global scale
includes surveys made by
Resources for the Future
in 1996
129
,by
Economist
magazine in 2003
30
, and by the
International Herald Tribune
39
.TheAsian
