New Delhi; March 28, 2011: Water is one of the most essential components for the existence of life. However, rapid development and industrialization has lead to pollution and depletion of water resources. If some concrete measures are not taken for conservation and effective utilization of water, day will not be far behind when human life will come to an end due to scarcity of water. As an endeavour to address these and many more such concerns, a National Seminar on “Sustainable & Innovative Solutions for Water Woes” was organized today by the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (DCEE) of Delhi Technological University (DTU), in association with Green Institute for Research & Development (GIRD).

Inaugurating the seminar, Prof. S.P. Gautam, Chairman, Central Pollution Control Board, Ministry of Environment and Forest, Govt. of India said, “Bin paani sab soon (there is no life without water). We need to have a fine balance between water and environment for sustainability. There is nothing like waste water, we need innovative technologies for conserving, recycling and reusing the same water.” Prof. Gautam also released a souvenir on ‘Sustainable & Innovative Solutions for Water Woes’ on the occasion.

The keynote speaker for the day was Prof. V. Subramanian, Professor Emeritus, School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, who gave a global scenario of water availability. “90% of the water available on Earth is in the form of oceans and a small proportion is available for human usage out of which 67% is used for agricultural purpose, 9% for households and about 6% for manufacturing and mining activities. One of the ways to resolve water problems is storage. Our storage capacity is one of the lowest in the world, even though we have rivers which overflow during monsoon,” he added.

The seminar also highlighted that about 750 million gallon sewage is generated in the Capital every day, out of which only 48% is treated and rest 52% is discharged to the drains from where it reaches Yamuna. The Vice Chancellor of DTU, Prof. P.B. Sharma informed, “We at DTU are taking concrete measures to reduce our dependency on water supplied through MCD and have established a Domestic Waste Water Recycling Plant’ of 30,000 litres capacity, to treat the waste water collected from hostels and other buildings of the University and reuse it for horticulture purpose. The challenge is to sustain DTU’s water table in the long run and encourage water harvesting and recycling at the campus by adopting innovative ways. We do not believe in only preaching but also practicing.”

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