Prevention is better than treatment, Water Prize Laureate

Stockholm Water Prize laureate Professor Perry L. McCarty from Stanford University, USA says that people cannot afford to lose the water available because of pollution.

At the opening session of the World Water Week in Stockholm, he said that it is estimated that there are 300-400 thousand contaminated ground water sites in the United States alone, the cost of cleaning up is estimated at 750 billion dollars or even more. Remediation using microorganisms is rather a very expensive method to clean up the contamination.

So the lesson from the American experience is that to prevent water from contamination is more important than to treat it after because technological treatment can only solve part of the problem.

“My own research focus on technical areas concerning biological processes for waste water treatment and ground water remediation and that resolves problem in part. But nevertheless, they are the important parts, as they concern the fundamental part of ground water supplies, as well as the use of waste resources”, said McCarty.

Professor McCarty said ground water is very special resources. 98% of world water is represented by ground water. 50% of the world relies on ground water for drinking water supply. Good quality groundwater can make it easier to treat for drinking water and there will be no cost of distribution and easy to clean up.

Ground water is one of the most precious resources. Unfortunately it is often contaminated by unwise practices such as over use of pesticide or untreated waste.
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