Theme: Millennium Development GoalsProject in Kenya: a tour around the Mara River Basin

The Nile: water allocation and sports

Jakarta: flooding and drinking water

Volume 25 - April 2015

RUPPEL

Dear Druppel reader,

Whenever someone told you “I am doing a project with Pe-ter-Jules”, you would always reply with “Oh, cool!”. And you would always ask further with the same genuine enthusiasm until you knew all the details.His students had taken over his passion and fervour, not only when talking about the project, but also when telling about him. I cannot think of anyone that was so inspirational to stu-dents.We have placed some of the warm hearted stories about Pe-ter-Jules on the previous pages. Though only a few out of the many, they show the love of him for us students and of us students for him.

On behalf of the Druppel committee,Frans Willem Hamer

The committee, from left to right: Agnindhira, Athina, Sandra (photo), Odilia, Nadja, Frans Willem, Parvathy, Thibaut

6

Do you have any comments on the articles? You don’t agree with the contest winner? Or do you just want to share your water story with us? Send in your mail and we can place it in the next Druppel!

Incoming mail

ColofonVolume 25, Number 1, April 2015The ‘Druppel’ is a magazine of the student society of water-management of the TU Delft. The magazine is published three times a year.

Editors:Frans Willem HamerSandra de VriesParvathy ChandrasekharThibaut VisserNadja den BestenAthina PappaAgnindhira NapitupuluOdilia Schölvinck

Design:Frans Willem HamerThibaut VisserNadja den BestenAgnindhira NapitupuluOdilia SchölvinckAthina Pappa

The ‘Druppel’ is distributed to all members and relations of the ‘Dispuut Watermanagement’, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Contact:Dispuut WatermanagementRoom 4.74Stevinweg 12628 CN Delft015-2784284druppleDWM@gmail.comwww.dispuutwatermanagement.nl

From the editors

Imagine the result

Hoogte van de foto is zo mogelijk 4/9 van de paginahoogte

Sitetekst en introtekst beginnen vijf basisregels onder de fotoKop en subkop + onderste slogan zijn variabel, de bodytekst is een vaste tekstInterlinie sitetekst-body staat niet vast op basislijn, behalve de eerste regel en begint vier basisregels na het subkopje

De functie-1 moet goed de ruimte krijgen. Bij voorkeur acht basisregels onder de intro en vijf basisregels tot bodytekst

Onderkant van het grijze vlak gelijk laten lopen met de bodytekst

Are you curious about the possibilities in the field of water management at ARCADIS? Visit our website: www.werkenbijarcadis.nl. Here you will find our current (internship/graduation) vacancies and you will find additional information about working at ARCADIS, movies of our colleagues as well as a list of upcoming events.

Are you curious of learning more about our professional vacancies please contact Ms. Silke Wekema, recruiter, via +31 6 2706 0697 or Mr. Thijs Pruijssers, campus recruiter, via +31 6 2706 0616, if you want to learn more about (graduation) internship projects at ARCADIS.

Will you take the first step?

Independent, proactive and entrepreneurial professionals watermanagement

When it comes to harbors, hydraulic engineering, water supply, waterlogging, water deficit, water quality, safety and fairway, the division Water and Environment operates. A secure life in a delta by a climate-resistant, durable and flexible water system. We connect water to regional development, environment and economy. We create short-term solutions that result in perspectives for the long term. The Netherlands, water country par excellence.

The connection is ours. Contact is yours.

Entrepreneurship in a complex

environment but with overview,

involvement and understanding

of business. Result orientated:

everyone says it, only a few live

up to it. ARCADIS: infrastructure –

water – environment – buildings.

Independently but integral. We

shape society by being creative in

our solutions and decisive execution.

As an employee of ARCADIS you will

be an out of the box thinker. You are

part of a network that exists out of

business professionals. Organized

around clients who directly will

benefit from our knowledge and

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We bring ideas to life.

Are you involved?

14-1186 Adv A4 Verbinding engels.indd 1 09-01-15 11:02

The Millennium Development Goals

In Depth

A word From the board p6

A view from Maurits Ertsen in the Column p7

Symposium 2015: Water as a Weapon p34

An Interview with our brand new head of the Department Prof. Dr. Luuk Rietveld p40

An overview of Water related Movies p48

A Druppel Recipe: Anaerobic egg p50

Water supply and Sanitation p14

Socio-hydrology for Sustainable Development p15

Challenges for AIAS p16

From Aid to Trade p16

Improved water and sanitation Vietnam p17

Water and Sanitation South Africa p19

Ghana-Netherlands WASH programme p20

Drinking with the Wind & Sun p21

Deficits of the MDGs A lack of leadership p22

Cultural differences p23

Some things to think about... p24

Jakarta,Drinking Water p29 & Flooding p32

Water World, water management around the globe p30

Greece, olive mill wastewater p33

Lab-setup, Shit-eating worms p36

Thesis, Marlies visiting the three countries of the Eastern Nile river basin p37

Sports, Kayaking on the wild White Nile p38

Kenya, A tour around the Mara Basin p44

Content

9

We were all shocked by the passing of Peter-Jules van Over-loop. All of us who had contact with him remember him as an enthusiastic, cheerful and esteemed lecturer and mentor. This memory will live on with and through us even now that he is not longer with us. Apart from this sad news we also had a lot of happy moments this academic year. The board change was one of them. We had to say goodbye to Thibaut, Janneke and Louise, who con-tributed a lot of their time, energy and creativity to the board and hence in the Dispuut. We thank all of them for a fun time and their effort. Replacing them as the new board members are Alexandra, Joost and Bart, who are now contributing their time to the board. Thanks to the symposium committee, we accomplished a suc-cessful symposium in 2015. This symposium, themed ‘water as a weapon’, was one of a kind. Because it was connected to the ‘vakantie-cursus’ for the first time, and as there was little time to prepare, it was quite a challenge for all the people in-volved. On top of that, the symposium committee introduced a new idea in combination with the symposium: speed dating

between students and companies. This offered great opportu-nities for students to reach out to companies, and the other way around. We all experienced a wonderful day.Besides the symposium committee, all the other committees are busy as usual. The activity committee organised a night of bowling in December last year, and we look forward to new and surprising activities this year. The MDE committee is planning the summer trip to England. Do not hesitate, join us and it will be a lot of fun.The Fitterij committee is also doing their best to organise a great day. This year the Fitterij will be our main activity in the Lustrum week. YES! It is Lustrum again. The Dispuut Water-management already exists for 35 years. Let’s celebrate this together! We will keep you up to date with our plans.Last but not least, our Druppel committee is doing a great job like always. They put a lot of energy and time in the publication of the Druppel. Lean back, take your time, and be entertained.

the 56th board

Sanitary Engineering

Peter Wessels A novel approach to Anaerobic Groundwater Treatment: Mitigating the effect of methane on the biological stability

of drinking water

Gerben Tommassen On the correlation between turbidity, conductivity and COD

Water Resources Management

Rutger Hofste Comparative Analysis Among Near – Operational Evapotranspiration

Emma Aalbers Evaporation in conceptual rainfall-runoff models – Testing model realism using remotely sensed evaporation

Onno Ebbens Parameter estimation in groundwater flow models with moments of the impulse response function

Ioanna Livaniou Evaluating Asset Management Strategies of Water Cycle Systems under Different Socio-Technical Contexts

Pradeep Rathore Error analysis of TRMM, WFD and APHRODITE datasets using Triple Collocation

Dennis Kuijk The water balance and climate change in Lelystad.

Jelmar Schellingerhout On-line parameter updating as an optimisation tool for Decision Support Systems

Maikel Votel Controlling minimum groundwater levels in urban areas; Evaluation of groundwater recharge system in Dordrecht.

Tim Hessels Comparison and validation of several Open Access Remotely Sensed Rainfall. Products for the Nile Basin.

10

From the Board

Graduates list November 2014 - March 2015

“The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name” (Terry Eagleton)

My first job at Delft University of Technology was in the Department of Technology and Society. The Department’s Dutch name was much more revealing about the status of social sciences and humanities at the university; literally translated it was named “Philosophy and Non-Technical Societal Sciences”. As such, the name reflected at least two things: 1) the philos-ophy group had been able to give itself a special position and 2) something like the “non-tech-nical” could be used as a concept. Concerning 1), philosophy has usually been defined as core of every university – but please consider that for a long time, before the many specializations we have now, philosophy was considered a much broader field.

It is 2), however, that is more interesting for now. Using something like a negative to define a group does not necessarily suggest that this group is taken very seriously. It sounds like a group just doing some leftovers from the technical sciences. The Department of T&S is long gone, with many of its (strongest) groups doing well in the Department of Technology, Policy and Management. In daily life, the marginal position of the social sciences and humanities in Delft education yields its results.

Even when I knew about the history of the fields in Delft, its students have been able to surprise me on what they know about “the social” or the “non-technical”, let alone how they can articulate their ideas about it. Once, I asked students in class what a certain paper they had to read was all about. After some discussions, many answered that the text was about how important the social aspects were when studying technical issues. I was a little disappointed, to be honest, as just repeating the title of the paper would have been a more accurate answer – it would have been something like “The pivotal role of canal operators in irrigation schemes: The case of the canalero” (Van der Zaag and Rap 2012).

What does this example suggest? I think I can argue that Delft students are usually aware of the existence of the “other” side of academics, that students appreciate the potential value of this other side for engineering, but that they have a hard time in going beyond this awareness. I would not like to suggest that we should train our engineers and scientists to become ex-perts in social sciences and humanities, but it would already be a start if they would know the difference between these two groups in the “non-technical” domain. The main reason for me, however, to argue that offering more options for including disciplines like history, philosophy, psychology and sociology in the engineering programs is beneficial, is that the technical-social divide is not terribly interesting and in theoretical terms actually highly problematic.

Take a recent initiative in the hydrological community to study “socio-hydrology”, in itself a recognition of the importance of human actions for hydrological processes. It brings social relations on board as well, as those influence what type of hydrological interventions are realized. Now, laudable as including human agency when studying processes that were clearly changed by that agency may be, let’s think about the word “socio-hydrology” a little more. Does the word not imply – as do socionatural, sociotechnical and other colleagues – that the “social” and the “technical” (and the “natural”) are (still) distinguishable categories that are to be linked? This might just be playing with words, but I see no need for socio-anythings once we have established that there is not theoretical distinction between social and technical.

There are obviously may claims about better technology, improved nature, desired envi-ronments, and natural processes. A closer look, however, suggests that any claim about tech-nology is in the realm of social relations between agents – where the shape of the technology obviously matters, but cannot be isolated from other factors. That does not make hydrology, biology, chemistry or fluid mechanics suddenly a social or political science, but it does suggest that their findings cannot simply be used to determine “the technical”. Everything is technical, as much as everything is social – or natural. Socio-hydrology is just hydrology…

Author:Maurits Ertsen

11

ColumnThe “Non-Technical”

In 2000 the great leaders of the world made promising agreements in the Millennium Declaration related to the en-vironment and welfare: The United Nations Member States unanimously agreed to help the poorest in the world to live a better life by the year 2015. To achieve this a set of time-bound goals and targets were made: The Millennium Devel-opment Goals (MDGs). Goals that are in our field of study related to water and sanitation, but also focusing on multiple other issues. Every year the Secretary General reports about the progress in achieving the MDGs. He tries to identify which areas need extra effort.Due to the strong economic progress in China and India the global poverty target for example is met. However, if we look from a more regional perspective the picture looks quite dif-ferent: Sub-Saharan Africa will not meet the poverty target until 2147. Other global problems are prevailing as well, such as rapid deforestation, increasing water scarcity, rising HIV prevalence and youth unemployment. In September 2013 a special event was organized to renew the commitment of the world leaders to achieve the goals. Each country is responsi-ble for their own progress on the MDGs, however they are able to find (financial) support from a set of parties including the World Bank, IMF, micro-finances , Bilateral donors, several UN departments and private parties.At the end of this year the deadline of the MDGs will be reached, so no better time for us to research them. Can the goals be achieved in time? In this Druppel we will try to ad-dress the MDGs in an interdisciplinary approach to have a better understanding of their progress and the failures. In several case studies we can see how the MDGs are taken in practice in the field, a leadership expert will share his view on the importance of leadership in realizing the goals, some cultural factors are highlighted that might form a problem for reaching the targets and, finally, a critical review is made.Throughout the edition it can be seen that water managers can play an important factor in achieving the MDGs. And may-be you can contribute yourself to reach the aimed targets in a project, there is still almost a year still to go! S

12

Millennium Development Goals

Active students working

to achieve the MDGs

1313

In September 2000, world leaders adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, committing the nations of the world to reduce extreme poverty. They set out a series of targets for 2015, the Millennium Development Goals. Lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene was identified as one of the world’s most urgent issues. Water-related improvements are crucial in improving the world health status, reducing preventable child mortality, in a sustainable way. In addition, these improvements induce multiple social and economic benefits, adding impor-tantly to enhanced well-being. The Millennium Development Goal 7 (MDG7) was to halve the proportion of people with-out sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanita-tion. These targets were set with the data of 1990, where 76% of the world population was using an improved drinking water source and 49% had access to an improved sanitation facility. So the target was that by 2015 88% of the world population had access to an improved drinking water source and 75% to an improved sanitation facility. These were ambitious goals, es-pecially considering that in the same time, the world received 2 billion new inhabitants (from 5.3 to 7.3 billion).What has been accomplished since 2000? The UN progress monitoring of the MDG indicate that the world reached the MDG for drinking water sources already in 2010. Over 2.3 billion people have gained access to an improved drinking wa-ter source between 1990 and 2012, out of which 1.6 billion received piped water supply on the premises. A tremendous achievement, but remember this still leaves 0.7 billion peo-ple (1 in 10) relying on unsafe sources, drinking straight from rivers or streams, or unprotected wells or springs. Should we read this as if 6.6 billion people now have access to safe drink-ing water? No, to safer drinking water. Of the improved sourc-es, still around 15% is contaminated with faecal indicator bac-teria and will give rise to enteric diseases. It is also increasingly recognized that monitoring of the presence of improved water supply facilities is not enough. If the facilities are not properly operated and maintained, people will have or divert to unsafe sources again. Also, the monitoring has focused on households, which is logical as first step, but other settings, such as schools, hospitals and refugee camps should be included.The world remains off track to meet the MDG sanitation tar-get of 75% and if current trends continue, is set to miss the target by more than half a billion people. Since 1990, almost 2 billion people have gained access to an improved sanitation fa-cility. Again, a tremendous achievement. The greatest progress has been made in Eastern Asia, where sanitation coverage has increased from 27% in 1990 to 67% in 2011. This amounts to more than 626 million people gaining access to improved sani-tation facilities over a 21-year period. However, current trends show sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia still struggle with low sanitation coverage. In sub-Saharan Africa, 44 per cent of the population uses either shared or unimproved facilities, and an estimated 26 per cent practices open defecation while in Southern Asia, the proportion of the population using shared or unimproved facilities has declined to 18 per cent but open defecation remains the highest of any region (39 per cent). De-spite these achievements, the United Nations estimates that there are 2.5 billion people (still 1 in 3 people!) who still do not use an improved sanitation facility and a little over 1 billion (1 in 7) practicing open defecation. “Almost 2,000 children die every day from preventable diarrhoeal diseases. Poor sanita-

tion and water supply result in economic losses estimated at $260 billion annually in developing countries”. Jan Eliasson, UN Deputy Secretary General, on adoption 24 July 2013 of UN General Assembly Resolution ‘Water for All’.So what’s next? Building upon the progress of the existing MDGs for water supply and sanitation, the aim of a global goal on water is to address “unfinished business” and encour-age governments to adopt ambitious targets for improving WASH service levels in order to reduce the global burden of WASH-related diseases, to improve productivity and eco-nomic growth, and to reduce inequalities between population groups. Given the limited progress with improving sanitation for the world population, the emphasis for the “next round” is more on improving sanitation, particularly on ending open defecation. Doing nothing is costly. Every US $1 spent on san-itation brings a $5.50 return by keeping people healthy and productive. The End Open Defecation Campaign, launched by UN in 2014, aims to help end the practice of open defecation and improve access to toilets and latrines for the 2.5 billion people without basic level sanitation. The campaign, which will run to the end of 2015, aims to break the silence - the silence on talking about open defecation and the silence on the deaths and diseases, particularly among children, that have occurred a result of open defecation practices and lack of decent toilets or latrines.In July 2014, new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were proposed entitled “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. The Sustainable Development Goals related to WASH are:

6.1 by 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all;

6.2 by 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanita-tion and hygiene for all, and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations;

6.a by 2030, expand international cooperation and capaci-ty-building support to developing countries in water and sanitation related activities and programmes, including water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewa-ter treatment, recycling and reuse technologies;

6.b support and strengthen the participation of local com-munities for improving water and sanitation manage-ment.

Some of the implementation challenges that have been gen-erally recognized include the need for increased and locally appropriate WASH financing, institutional capacity, political support and management of inconsistencies in the enforce-ment of legislation. There is a need to scale up appropriate technologies and improve capacity to deal with inequalities and tackle the problems of open defecation, WASH in schools and health centres. So, to the new generation of water and sanitation engineers: if you want to make a difference in the world, if you recog-nize the solution to these challenges requires your technical knowledge and skills, but also that you interact with people with skills in financing and building support for new solutions from politics, institutions and citizens, there are some big chal-lenges here for you! S

14

2015: did we score the Millennium Development Goals on water supply and sanitation?

Millennium Development Goals

Author:Gertjan Medema

Professor in Water and Health

Chief Science Officer at KWR Water Cycle Re-search Institute

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are to be replaced by Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a September 2015 United Nations gathering of world leaders in New York. MDGs have been a mixed success, most successful being in public health and reduction of proportion of people who are hungry. Yet the 8 MDGs that comprised a total of 18 targets are sup-posed to be replaced by 17 SDGs and 169 targets! So what are these SDGs?The Rio+20 Conference and its document “The Future We Want” set out the agenda to shape the next 15 years of UN development agenda. The open working group, which comprises of representatives from member states, set out with this task, has now proposed a list of goals and constituting targets. Most likely these are to be called “Sustainable Development Goals.” , Given the momentum provided by the MDGs, the goals set out by the MDGs, and carried over by the SDGs, are likely to be covered at an even faster pace. However the number of goals, at least the targets may need to be reduced to a manageable number, especially since it is immensely expensive to measure any of the targets. Tremendous uncertainties lie in valuing and assessing progress towards these goals. One way, and it appears to be the most popular, is to identify those that either are most likely to be achieved or are to be most impactful. Since financing of these goals is yet another challenge, the latter of the two may most likely be more prudent. One expectation is of up to $2.5 trillion of international aid over the 15 years period till 2030. Even $1 trillion of private investment waits to be unlocked (with interest from asset managers controlling up to $45 tril-lion of capital worldwide) if we can come up with better ways to value interventions and measure our progress in achieving sustainable development goals. After all, both private investors and tax payers would demand most bang for their buck given the recent onslaught of the global economic crisis. Another way to keep SDGs manageable may be to indentify themes that crosscut many of the goals. People are central to these goals and many of these goals are intertwined by wa-ter. The new field of Socio-hydrology offers us with a positive framework to view human and water as a coupled system, al-lowing us to formalize connections between various goals. One major advantage of such a formal framework is a better and more precise valuation of impacts and progress towards the development goals. Never before have technical, more formal, emphasis on describing the two-way feedbacks been made in collaboration (note, not in competition!) with non-formal stud-ies of human systems interacting with nature. Consider marginal farmers or small holders, who own less than 2 ha of land. These farmers are crucial for food security in developing countries. A fact that nearly 80% of Indian farmers are smallholders, who merely own a third of total farmlands and belong to the poorest quartile, but produce nearly 40% of country’s food grains is mindboggling . The socio-hydrology of a smallholder, that studies it as a coupled system comprising of lo-cal hydrologic system, ecology, soil system, livestock and agricul-ture and alternate sources of income, can simultaneously assess the feedbacks between various goals such as sustainable water management, poverty, food security, biodiversity loss, impact of feed trade and technological innovation. Any intervention, for example increasing the minimum wage, can be valued in how it propagates through the system and simultaneously affect food

and water security, sustainable water resource management, poverty and reduction of people who are hungry. The water-food-energy-ecology nexus at basin scale can also be understood by the socio-hydrological framework. Technol-ogy mediated growth, say for example agricultural production using fertilizers and hybrid seeds can accelerate growth but at the cost of degrading water quality and availability. Naturally this imposes even more pressure on the carrying capacity to sustain growth in agricultural production. How can we then sus-tain our growing population? Recent socio-hydrological studies have highlighted that it is our awareness of environmental deg-radation that sometimes aids us in breaking the vicious cycle of growth and environmental degradation. A sustainable future, a future that we all want, is perhaps a delicate balance between technological innovation and environmental awareness. By un-derstanding the complex socio-hydrological dynamics and the associated feedbacks between water-food-energy-ecology di-mensions, we can now assess more accurately how technology, environmental degradation, political economy and food security are interlinked.Global technological and economic integration has advanced to a point that “de-globalization” appears to be implausible. On the contrary, trade liberalization is one of the SDGs and in fact it is one of the most impactful. Copenhagen consensus center estimates that €1 spent on trade liberalization can unleash a benefit of up to €2,011 mostly to developing countries2. For example, agriculture accounts for 10% of global trade yet ac-counts for nearly 2/3 of costs associated with trade barriers, such as export bans on food and state sponsored agricultural policies in developing countries . The concept of water footprint can help assess part of these benefits since distorted policies of national governments can adversely affect sustainable develop-ment. Population, affluence and global political economy mostly drive trade patterns, often at the cost of local water and food security. With agricultural trade, we virtually trade in water as well, up to 2 x 1012 m3/year globally10! Land and water re-source grabbing by relatively rich but resource scarce countries in resource rich developing countries is yet another example of how adverse impacts of growth on water resources are being exported elsewhere . Population and economic growth also changes land cover patterns and water resource availabil-ity, which affects physical redistribution of water through the hydrological cycle. Consequences of changing trade patterns, demography and affluence thus have an important bearing on water and food security and local sustainability and vice versa . Water Footprint Assessment is yet another socio-hydrological analytical framework that brings out the interconnectedness between various SDG goals and provides a holistic framework to simultaneously measure progress in those goals. The adoption of Sustainable Development Goals will be a great step forward in the global development agenda. However, the path to implementing SDGs will not be an easy one. Uncertain-ty in valuation and measurement of any progress will be abound. While it is convenient to think of various goals as independent ones, they are surprisingly interconnected through water. So-cio-hydrology offers a wonderful opportunity to frame the web of interconnectedness in a scientifically coherent manner. Why not exploit it and contribute to the emerging science for global development! S

15

Socio-hydrology for Sustainable Development

Author:Saket Pande

Millennium Development

Goals

In the current water development agenda of the central gov-ernment of the Netherlands benefits for the Dutch water sec-tor are part of the required achievements. That means that the long term aid policy of financing Dutch NGOs1 to execute de-velopment programmes and projects in developing countries belongs to the past. As of 2015 the development aid financed by the Dutch government2 is project based and aimed at ex-port and promotion of trade for Dutch products and services. This new approach implies a new form of cooperation, both inside the Netherlands, as well as in the partner countries. Recipients of ODA subsidies of the Ministry of Foreign Af-fairs entail almost 70 NGOs. Being left without fixed financing, most NGOs are transformed in entities specialized in propos-al writing and financial engineering, i.e. experts in the field of finding project and programme budgets. One of the main ad-vantages is that projects are likely to become more result ori-ented since every single project is evaluated and assessed on an individual basis as opposed to before when organisations rather than projects were financed. A large disadvantage is the fact that organisations are busier with project and budget management than with the actual projects, the local beneficiar-ies, and knowledge development itself – mostly individually and therefore perhaps less efficient. The shift of focus from aid to trade also brings along signifi-cant opportunities. Due to the fact that NGOs – organisations with considerable insight in country specific developments,

In Mozambique approximately 65% (5.1 million people) of the people living in an urban area do not have access to the most basic forms of sanitation. It is an enormous challenge to im-prove the absence of sanitation. The difficulties are in the lack of coordination between the different stakeholders, the main-tenance of the existing infrastructure, lack of knowledge and experience and finally problems due to multicultural customs and taboos. Currently AIAS is working on project PO15 financed by the Dutch embassy in Mozambique to prevent water transmitted diseases, improve the quality of life of the people and avoid environmental damage (part of MDG 7). In the project a huge part of the population of fifteen cities will gain access to better quality drinking water and safer sanitation during a period of three years. To bring the project to a success, several sanitation groups were founded consisting of a variety of different stakeholders. These include the local government, public works, the health-care, schools, professionals from the sector, and also civil so-

local networks, and developing markets – are looking for new partnerships, Dutch companies that want to conquer inter-national markets can use them as entry to markets. Since last year the Netherlands Water Partnership – being the public private network organization of the Dutch water sector – is involved in this new form of international development coop-eration. NGOs hesitant? Companies unwilling? Luckily not all! Companies with international ambitions such as Susteq and Royal Eijkelkamp find their way to NGOs such as Aqua for All and SNV and vice versa. NGOs that are involved in water supply and sanitation for the so-called bottom of the pyramid – the poorest of the poor – indicate that water development cooperation is heading to-wards business development and therefore cannot reach the poor. Advocates underline that business development in devel-oping countries with assistance of and benefit for the Dutch private sector will trickle down and ultimately benefit these poor. I see opportunity in the aid and trade policy, not only because Dutch businesses can assist local private sector development together with NGOs and thereby ensure sustainable develop-ment with respect for the environment, but also will Dutch company employees become aware of the development con-text and the need for environmentally friendly production methods and consuming behavior, both locally and in the Netherlands. S

ciety as churches, mosques and other societies. The sanitation groups are trained in a variety of ways tailored to their region-al differences, such as the reuse of greywater. They also learn to set up publicity campaigns on sanitation and hygiene. For every project these campaigns are of high importance to make people aware of the significance of hygiene. The continuity of the knowledge exchange is assured by regu-lar feedback sessions between sanitation groups and the AIAS. Furthermore, the project places different toilets in schools, markets and bus stations. The placement of the toilets is a training for the local sanitation groups, where they learn how to coordinate and act as a supervisor to the contractor and to communicate to the local institutions and population. Also, a curriculum for schools is set up for children’s understanding of sanitation and personal hygiene. Different employees of AIAS are involved in these projects, with the aim that they can implement the procedure as well in the other 135 cities in Mozambique. S

16

From aid to trade: implications for international water development

Author:Machteld Galema

Author:Teus Bronius

Company:Waternet

Millennium Development Goals

Challenges for AIAS in the field

1Medefinancieringsstel-sel 2010-2015 (MFS II)

2Nieuwe agenda voor hulp, handel en invest-eringen

www.ondernemeninont- wikkelingslanden.nl

In July 2014 I moved to Ho Chi Minh City for a 2 year as-signment for Vitens Evides International (VEI) within the Young Expert Program of NWP. Vietnam had already achieved Mil-lennium Development Goal 7c regarding access both to safe water and to sanitation by 20121. Access to “improved water sources” rose from 62% in 1990 to 95% in 2012, while access to “improved sanitation sources” rose from 39% to 79%. This reflects the stunning technological and economic progress re-cently realized in Vietnam, a country that was known to be among the world’s poorest regions around 1990. There are still major challenges to be addressed however, as the devel-opment of specific regions such as the Northern and Central Highlands and Mekong Delta lag behind. I was able to see this for myself during a beautiful cycling trip with my visiting family through the Mekong Delta this past Christmas holiday. After a first shaky sanitary stop hovering above the river, it soon became a game to shoot the best pic-ture of a “toilet with a view”. It directly confronts us with the question: what is really an “improved sanitation facility”? In the Mekong Delta many people still wash their clothes (and some-times themselves) in the same river that serves as a sewer for

their neighbours. A hanging toilet is not an improved facility. On the other hand, if a toilet is strategically located above the farm’s fish pond, one wonders if the Vietnamese may ac-tually have succeeded in closing the sanitary cycle better than the Dutch with our complex system of sewers, rising mains and treatment plants. The improved sanitation facility is mainly about what happens after the sanitary stop.When it comes to water supply, providing a water connection is not enough. Does the connection actually provide water (7 days a week)? Is that water safe? Is it affordable? Is the respon-sible drinking water utility sustainably managed and financially stable? VEI focuses on strengthening partner water utilities to address these issues. e.g. better maintenance management, increasing energy efficiency, reduction of non revenue water (water losses), as well as increasing coverage to those not yet connected to piped water supply. In this regard I very much ap-plaud the development that the new SDG “Safe Drinking Wa-ter, Sanitation and Hygiene” will contain the objective “Safely Managed Services”. It is the only way to achieve sustainable universal access to safe drinking water facilities.S

16 17

Towards improved water and sanitation (services) in Vietnam

Author:Adriaan

Ruijmschoot

Company:VIE-international

YEP-Water

1Vietnam factsheet WHO/UNICEF, 2014 www.wssinfo.org

Millennium Development

Goals

Visionary responses to global water challenges

We live in a complex world, shaped and challenged by water. Royal HaskoningDHV understands these challenges and works with our clients to create solutions.

royalhaskoningdhv.com

n Continuing to achieve economic growth in changing times, using water as a driver for growth and resilient communities

n Designing our cities of the future to be Water Smart, with the hydro-social environment in balance

n Creating Water Security and Resilience through integrated management of extreme events to deal with both floods and droughts

n Connecting water infrastructure needs with investment opportunities

n Harnessing water as a resource and a sustainable energy source

n More efficient water use for agriculture through technical and institutional solutions, to provide “more crop per drop”

n Reducing our water footprint and making a step-change from eco-efficient towards eco-effective water use

Contact us about helping to deliver your water challenges and visions.

Water Ambition and Imagination

One of South Africa’s greatest challenges is poverty alleviation, which is of course also coupled to socio-economic inequality. To put these inequalities into perspective South Africa, with a GINI coefficient around 0.65, is one of the most unequal so-cieties in the world (World Bank, 2011). GINI coefficients are used to measure the gap between rich and poor (0 = perfect equality and 1 = complete inequality) and in comparison the Netherlands has a coefficient around 0.289. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) are aimed at trying to alleviate extreme poverty and inequality worldwide, through eight main goals. Given the poverty issues in South Africa, the MDG’s were used as a benchmark for measuring progress towards poverty alleviation and equitable development. With regards to water, key facets of poverty alleviation include providing all people with access to adequate drinking water and sanitation. As a part of the government’s MDG programme, South Africa set ambitious targets for drinking water supply and sanitation, which in fact exceeded the MDG requirements – see Table 1.

Table 1 shows that the government has made commendable progress towards providing the fundamental basics of water and sanitation supply, however a significant amount of work is still required especially with regard to sanitation. These basic water supply and sanitation statistics certainly do not paint the full water picture. South Africa faces many water related challenges, including:

• Effluent quality failures at the majority of wastewater treat-ment plants

• Extreme water pollution (faecal contamination) in surface water around impoverished neighbourhoods

• Drinking water quality failures in small towns and rural areas

• Periodic water supply system failures in sections of large cities

• Acid mine contamination of surface waters in central South Africa

• Ageing water supply and wastewater infrastructure coupled with extreme budget constraints, resulting in infrastructure failures

• A lack of water engineers in the public service – from na-tional government departments down to municipal water supply and sanitation divisions.

The challenges listed above endanger the progress made to-wards providing all South Africans with access to clean drink-ing water and improved sanitation. Furthermore, the statistics used by the South African government (Table 1) are slightly misleading because they do not account for system reliability. The MDG’s and other monitoring programmes that use basic and crude indicators to judge service provision can be danger-ous because they do not tell the full story, but they still serve some purpose if they promote action from governments. Provision of water and sanitation is also a complex political issue, with the South African government promising impover-ished communities free basic services. The expectation has developed that the government will provide a free house with water connection and waterbourne sanitation (flush toilet) to impoverished citizens – especially those residing in informal settlements (shack/slum dwellers). Given the current backlog of housing, it will take decades to provide free government housing to all informal settlements across South Africa. Critics

have argued that a better solution would have been to pro-vide more basic services (such as of a water connection and a VIP (ventilated improved pit latrine toilet) to plots and allow people to construct their own house on the plot – in this way state funds would go further and services could be provided to more people in a shorter period of time. Given the shear scale of South Africa’s water issues, it will re-quire a co-ordinated effort to find solutions. Water engineers are of course at the front line of trying to develop, maintain and operate critical water and sanitation systems – we have the responsibility to try to ensure innovative and cost-effec-tive solutions are implemented in order to ensure limited state funds can go further. We cannot lose sight of the huge impact that water and sanitation provision has on the livelihoods of impoverished communities. Working as an engineer in South Africa or any other developing country is of course challenging and often frustrating due to the slow pace of progress, but on the other hand knowing the impact that successful projects bring is also highly rewarding. Hopefully 100% access to clean water and decent sanitation in South Africa can be achieved in the near future, however care also needs to be taken to ensure that gains towards this goal are not eroded by infrastructure failures. S

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Issue MDG South African Goal

1996 baseline

2011 progress

Conclusion

Drinking Water Supply Access within 200m of house

Halve the proportion of people without access

100% access 76.6% 90.8% MDG met; but not country goal

Access to Improved sanitation (minimum VIP toilet)

Halve the proportion of people without access

100% access 49.3% 66.5% MDG likely to be met; but not country goal

Table 1: Water and sanitation goals in South Africa (MDG country report, 2013)

Millennium Development

Goals

Author:Struan Robertson

Water Supply and Sanitation in South Africa

2020

Early 2014, the Technical Assistance as-signment for the Ghana-Netherlands WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) programme (GNWP) was awarded to a consortium of Witteveen+Bos (lead), Simavi and Berenschot. The GNWP programme is funded by both the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Gov-ernment of Ghana, in support of the Mil-lennium Development Goals, and aims for more public and private collabora-tion in the WASH sector. A great oppor-tunity for Dutch engineers, management consultants and NGO staff to work jointly, and to learn from each other and from our Ghanaian counterparts. As part of the assignment, WASH mas-ter plans were prepared for, and in col-laboration with, five municipalities in Accra and Cape Coast and Elmina. The master plans define the WASH vision for 2020 and explore which investments (and projects) are needed. An interest-ing challenge, as municipalities were not used to thinking ‘far ahead’; each year they have to wait a long time for their small operational budget. Also within the consortium we learned a lot. While en-gineers tend to see everything as a pro-ject, management consultants look at it like a process - we could add up these experiences.For sanitation MDG, goals are not on target and it shows. In some of the municipalities the access to improved sanitation is deplorable and actions to decrease open defecation are being implemented (such as media campaigns to change behaviour). Daily, approx. 80 septic tank emptiers dump their load at the infamous Lavender Hill in Accra, flowing into the sea untreated. Once

beautiful sandy beaches are polluted and the (surf worthy) waves carry plastic bags. Tourists (and expats) have to trav-el far outside Accra to enjoy the beach (but once you’re there it is awesome). In this ‘challenging’ environment, we are lucky to execute concrete projects and change processes - difficult as they are; providing WASH facilities and educa-tion in 100 schools, building capacity of municipal staff in the waste domain (for example contract management for their private waste operators) and developing water supply, drainage and sanitation in-frastructure works. The consortium established an office in Accra as a home base for the activities, with good Ghanaian engineers and staff. But don’t expect the challenges to end there. Opening a bank account took us

Ghana-Netherlands WASH Programme

Author:Ir. J.C. Schut

Branch Manager Ghana OfficeWitteveen+Bos

jochem.schut@witteveenbos.com

four months, having access to internet banking took another three. as you can imagine, working in the WASH sector in Ghana is not an easy task. Luckily, it is rewarding and fun! As an engineer for Witteveen+Bos, I welcome student’s ambitions to work in Africa and to be part of this growing continent. Working at our company, being a water trainee or participate in the YEP programme are all possibilities to make this dream come true. S

You can find additional information on the GNWP project on our website: http://www.gnwp.nl/

Millennium Development Goals

In the past 7 years, a number of projects were performed with the combination of reverse osmosis (RO) and sustainable ener-gy. The combination of RO with a windmill was called “Drinking with the Wind” while the combination of RO with PV-panels was called “Drinking with the Sun”. The aim was always to build prototypes of these installations and operate them in arid areas around the world. All the projects were MSc-thesis projects. The first prototype was a windmill and RO combination for the desalination of seawater and we tested it in Curacao. The goal was to design a stand-alone windmill driven RO-system, so there was no backup of the grid. The power fluctuation of the windmill was the challenge with a system like this. In the Curacao case we designed the RO in a way that it is able to produce more water (higher fluxes) at increasing wind speeds. This is challenging because the water quality of the permeate is also depending on the flux.The next prototype was a RO installation that is combined with PV-solar panels. The problem with this combination was the limited operation hours, with only 8-10 hours in day time. Presence of clouds are also interfering the proper operation of the RO-installation. We solved this problem by adding a short term buffer to the system. With super-capacitors we were able to operate the RO smoothly. But energy storage for the night was not economically feasible so the RO could not run 24 hours a day.Two sustainable energy technology (SET) students, Sid Volle-bregt and Reinoud Feenstra, came with an innovative idea to deal with the night-storage problem. They built a pilot in Bali (Indonesia) and were able, after several months of failures, to operate the RO 24 hours continuously during one month. They received many prizes for their design and they founded a com-pany in Yes!Delft as a medium to bring their design to the mar-ket. They are building and commissioning their first full scale plant at the moment.Now, we are working on a new prototype for the RO and windmill combination. The most important drawbacks of the previous prototypes were the slow turning multi-blade wind-mills. The quality of these windmills was not very reliable and we wanted to scale the concept to larger and modern wind-mills. Even though modern windmill provides lower torque, but the blades run faster. On the other hand, the energy cannot be transferred from the gondola to ground level with a shaft. So

the next prototype is a modern windmill equipped with a hy-draulic system (oil) to transfer the energy to ground level. The hydraulic system will drive the high pressure pump of the RO and produce fresh water from seawater.The new prototype will be tested on the isle of Jonny Cay close to San Andres in the Caribbean (see picture below). We wanted to keep the RO running as constant as possible, so the windmill we use is oversized: it produces enough energy already at a wind speed of 5 m/s. At wind speed above 5 m/s the excess on energy will be transferred to electrical energy. The project is also aiming at education: The installation can be visited by tourists in the island and the concept is going to be explained by posters and a movie. The windmill and RO com-bination will provide the island enough water and electricity to become independent of San Andres. The island itself is part of a national reserve. The project will run during the coming three years and stu-dent can go to the installation for an internship or for their MSc-thesis. S

20 21

Drinking with the Wind & Sun

Author:Bas Heijman

Millennium Development

Goals

Despite the great effort by many initiatives and projects all over the world, more than half of the millennium goals have not been reached yet. In this edition of the Druppel we have reviewed different aspects the Millennium Development Goals, both its suc-cesses and its failures. In this section, the MDGs will be critically assessed. What can be the reasons for the failures: bad leadership, lack of responsibility, corruption, no legal precautions, local circumstances, lack of vision…? Achieving such big goals on a global scale seems to be very complex. To have a better understanding we have consulted a leadership expert. He will give insight for great leadership in achieving the MDGs and additional information how to become a great leader yourself. Also an example of an anthropological issue conflicting with the MDGs is given by a fellow student, Parvathy Chandrasekhar. Hereafter, The deficits of the MDG are further questioned by two Druppel reporters.

Critical notes

How would you define good leadership?“Good leaders could be defined as people who know why they do what they do (their purpose), people whom are aware of their qualities (know where they can contribute), people whom are passionate about their action and people whom think in terms of continuity. These are the basic aspects that I think good leadership exists of.”

Are the failures or successes of the MDGs imputable to leadership?“Taking into consideration the above mentioned; good lead-ership is needed to achieve goals in general. Therefore, I state that for achieving the MDGs, good leadership is needed as well. When talking about the MDGs we talk about goals that are ambitious and concern many stakeholders; beyond our comprehension. This means that a lot of different parties are involved in working towards the goal. In order to succeed, dif-ferent visions should be shared, heard and finally committed to, to establish the overall purpose. Here comes in a special aspect of leadership, called vision sharing: being able to bring parties together, share concerns, define mutual objectives. We need leadership to facilitate this process, to define the goals, to secure them and -when needed- to remind different stake-holders what they were again. The latter requires passion of the leader to keep inspiring others to take action.”

But is there a single leader needed in a project to suc-ceed? Can’t it evolve from a community force?“I believe that one should distinguish between the authori-tarian leader and a leader that initiates leadership among the

others. It is not about the genius with the thousand helpers, it is about facilitating a community where each stakeholder has ownership and takes its responsibility, and where a common goal is shared and secured. By achieving such ambitious goals as the MDGs you need every stakeholder to exert leadership. As the anecdote goes:

“If things are going well he/she should be able to look through the window and give the credits to the people whom are do-ing it. However when things are going bad he/she should be able to look in the mirror as well, take his/her responsibility and be critical towards his/her leadership. Too often, we see it the other way around unfortunately.”

What is the best attitude as a leader in a foreign pro-ject?“In any project we should distinguish between leadership and management. In foreign projects we usually talk about project management. To quote Covy, another leadership expert:

“To put it in a nutshell: management is about performing your tasks in the right manner, while leadership about doing the right thing! Projects often fail because of a lack of vision or inadequate communication of the vision towards the team. This results in people not knowing the purpose behind what

“Strong Leadership requires someone who realizes when to look into the mirror or when to look through the window.. “

“Leadership precedes management.”

It is a rainy Friday afternoon, and we are meeting with a leadership expert. Glenn Weisz (probably all familiar to the female participants of Civil Engineering in Developing Countries) is waiting for us in the cozy coffeecorner of the library. We immediately notice a person with great charisma, confidence and leadership. A little shy we greet and take place in the uncomfortable seats of the coffeecorner. As soon as Glenn starts sharing his ideas, we get dragged into his passionate story…

22

Interviewers:Odilia Schölvinck & Nadja den Besten

Deficits of the MDGs

A lack of leadership...

Author:Parvathy

Chandrasekhar

Critical notes

After the interview we were inspired by the words of Glenn. We came to the conclusion that everybody should bear in mind: good leaders are the individuals that initiate leadership among others. Never forget that as an individual, whether a student or a professional, true leadership is a coexistence and not an ego tour. And to finish off with one last quote by Glenn:

I grew up in a country where people are divided not just by their religion and language but also by the social hierarchy of the household in which they are born - also known as a person’s caste. As a kid, I was not aware of how deep root-ed the caste system was in India and I certainly did not care from what social groups my friends came from, as long as I had someone to play with. However, as I became older, it became painfully apparent to me that there was no escaping the very rigid social hierarchy in my country. The caste system ruled everything – right from college admissions that worked based on reservations for each caste to politics where parties were formed based on the caste system.During my Masters at TU Delft, the issue of the caste based society back home still haunted me and I did my Master thesis on Drinking Water Security in Peri Urban India. The research offered a fascinating lens through which I could study the rights based approach to water access. I learnt that the societal set up in rural India still did not allow the people from the lowest caste, commonly known as Dalits, to access basic resources. The concept of the purity of exists as a theme and is used to exclude the lowest caste members of the society from the wa-ter sources as it is believed that they are capable of polluting them. In case, a Dalit accidentally (or in some cases, in an act of desperation) drinks water from these sources, an exhaustive ritual is done in order to purify the water source again. Usually,

the “culprit” is punished for his/her act and shunned further by the other people. The argument that the so-called upper caste people give are – “Can the Dalits not be satisfied using the water that we give them? Why do they still complain of inequality?” Though there are policies that aim to improve the water access to the lower castes, the state based approach and inadequacy of local interventions has resulted in the persistence of the situa-tion. According to me, new policies should aim at including the people who are otherwise socially excluded in the decision making process, right from the village level. Even here, the local authorities have the position to concentrate power to the so-cially dominant and the whole process becomes just a façade. It is not easy to erase the deep rooted social and cultural beliefs of the people and it might take a long time to expose and address the inequities at a very local scale. As John F Kennedy rightly said: “Anyone who can solve the prob-lems of water will be worthy of two Nobel prizes – one for peace and one for science” S

they are doing: the communication fails, goals are not achieved, un-clarity, despair, etc. If you are continuously aware about the fact that leadership should create a common understanding and combine forces, then you are working your way towards bringing a project to success. When doing projects in different development countries myself, I’ve always set my mind to learn at least as much from local people, as I thought they could learn from us. Uneducated does not necessarily imply unde-veloped, you know. I was always pleasantly surprised how wise many people were in development areas, despite the lack of traditional education.”

How can you maintain your vision as a leader when setbacks are encountered?“Setbacks are always there and that is good, because with-out there is no progress. The main thing is maintaining your passion and remain confident about your own potential and that of your team. That will make you resilient against setbacks.

Passion and confidence amongst many other things are crucial in securing a project’s continuity.”

To be a good leader in a foreign project what kind of personal goal (passion) is needed?“I keep going back to the theory, but we could look at leader-ship from two dimensions: task-oriented focus and people-ori-ented focus. Both aspects are required, there is no better or worse. Thus, effective leadership requires one to focus on the goals as well as expressing genuine interest in people. In con-tributes to the ownership, involvement and commitment of every stakeholder to meet the desired outcome. Interestingly, in foreign projects you also encounter anthropological issues that make the project even more complex. A good leader should be able to notice these differences, minimize the risk they oppose as he/she seeks to focus on the common purpose all stakeholders share. Cultural awareness is extremely impor-tant; the ability to empathize as a leader is therefore a must.”

22 23

Cultural differences...

“Great leaders were often perceived as troublemakers when they started. Yet life changers when they persisted”

Glenn’s Tips towards good leadership: 1. Make sure you know what you value as important, or what makes your heart beat faster.2. Imagine: Once you have no expectation of others, no study debts, but a million dollar on your bank account. What would be the first thing you would do? What would be the first activity that will give you contentment?3. Go and ask your surrounding where your talents lay.4. How can you combine these talent(s) and passion(s) into practice, in an activity where you can contribute. S

Critical notes

24

Contact us:What do you think? Write your thoughts to: Druppeldwm@gmail.com

Seeing so many good examples of the MDGs in execution throughout this edi-tion of the Druppel it is also of value to critically assess them. As previously mentioned the MDGs did not all suc-ceed: the goals related to hunger, sanita-tion, and the environment have not been met. The MDGs are huge goals, cutting through many disciplines and address-ing many stakeholders. You could even question whether the MDGs are sincere goals. Maybe they are just a loose col-lection of diplomatic soft agreements between the world leaders? More a pro-motion on what is wished for than ac-tual international recognised standards.Nevertheless, before the formation of the MDGs there was no common frame-work to promote global development at all. The goals have brought diffuse inter-national development closer together with this international initiation; a very important and valuable outcome on its own. But to be able to improve, you need to know what is wrong with the current goals and their structure.As mentioned by Glenn, a lack of leader-ship could be one of the shortcomings in the MDGs. More precisely put: due to a lack of shared vision, responsibility and continuity of the goals. The MDGs do not describe who is accounted for the goals and where the responsibility lays in the end is unknown. The UN up-dates every once in a while progression on the MDGs, but this touches the next problem with the MDGs. There is a lack of data about the progression on the MDGs. Not every country has the mon-ey, nor the ability, to monitor the data about the evolvement on the different MDG topics. Combined with a missing international framework to manage the information, this results in an incomplete update on the MDGs.Content wise there are also problems with the MDGs. As they evolved from the Millennium Declaration, they missed out goals on peace, disarmament, human rights and democracy. Which is rather peculiar when you think about it: How would you achieve food security without focussing on peace? Or how would you, for example, improve the availability of drinking water in India if the caste sys-tem overrules? The latter questions re-sult from the fact that the goals do not stand alone and exemplifies every region needs a different approach; maybe even seeks for a different goal. So are diplo-matic global goals needed to develop regionally? S

Some things to think about...

Authors:Odilia Schölvinck & Nadja den Besten

This figure shows the current status of the MDGS. (Source: Sulishealth.com)

A Drinking water well in Mozambique Picture: Luuk Rietveld

In the second week of November 2014 we left the Nether-lands temporarily to participate in a multidisciplinary project in Jakarta, Indonesia. For this project our team consisted of five MSc Civil Engineering Water Management students with Water Resource Management and Sanitary Engineering spe-cializations. The project focussed on the treatment and dis-tribution of drinking water in the largest metropolis of the archipelago Indonesia. For this research the team looked at the possibilities for improvement of drinking water production and supply by means of literature research, data analysis and the execution of various experiments. The project itself was about the possibilities of optimization in the production and supply of drinking water in the metropolis

Jakarta. Within the scope of the project the treatment pro-cesses of three various water treatment plants were analysed, the efficiency was determined, the distribution network was analysed, experiments were conducted, improvement possi-bilities were researched and subsequently recommendations were provided in order to improve the supply of clean water in the city. In the first weeks, we started learning the basics of the local language in order to understand numbers, ingredients for food and how to greet. These basics proved to be very useful, since the local people appreciated this gesture to learn the language. It was also very helpful since all the menus in restaurants were written in Bahasa. The cultural differences between Indonesia and the Nether-lands are huge. People in Indonesia have less properties, but are happy with their belongings. Things are less complicated in Indonesia: people exercise proceedings they feel like to be required. Therefore it seems they create their own jobs. The food is also much more simple: the base of each meal is rice, combined with chicken, some herbs and sometimes vegeta-bles. Day in, day out. We think this more simplistic way of life decreases the stress level drastically.The traffic in the city itself is bizarre. There are so many scoot-ers and cars: it is busy all day on the roads. Jakarta has 10 million inhabitants during the night and during the day an extra 10 million people that travel towards the city for their job. This results in major business on the road and huge traffic jams. Four people on a single scooter are not a rarity. We spent free time with sports (swimming and fitness) and relaxing in the rooms or the roof of our apartment. In the weekends we spent more time sightseeing, either in Jakarta or outside the city. We went to some islands near the coast of Jakarta and various places on the island Java like Bandung and Jogjakarta for example. Here we enjoyed the beautiful sights, culture, food, nature and people of Indonesia. The trip was really useful for personal development: we learned to consider and appreciate values and norms of dif-ferent cultures. On the other hand it is really good to see how to apply technologies in practice and how useful these are for the local people. It was also nice to distribute information to local employees of the water companies and our Delft vision of thinking. We think Indonesia can really benefit from this in-formation and vision.Indonesia, we enjoyed you! Hopefully we see you again, some-time! S

29

Drinking water in Jakarta

Author:Niels van Linden

Project abroad

30

Greece - Rehabilitation of Asopos River and GroundwaterLocated in a heavily industrialized and agricultural area, Asopos River basin has fifty times higher hexavalent chromium concentration than the national legal limit. To overcome this, the Greek Government launched a remediation project. The method used in this program is phyto-extraction and rhizofiltration using halophytes plants. The hexa-valent chromium substance in the water is absorbed and/or adsorbed on to harvestable parts of the plants and removed from the water content. Pilot projects in a form of wetlands are now being done by Tech. University of Crete.Athina Chrisovergi, Charikleia Sifaki, Konstantinos Makris, and Athina Pappa

Mexico - Construction of Eastern Drainage TunnelDeemed to be the biggest underground drainage tunnel in the world, this 7 m diameter tunnel is about 62 km in length and stretched from Rio de los Remedios and ends in water treatment plant in Atotonilco de Tula. Started in 2008, the tunnel is constructed in order to support the existing drainage tunnels and canals in Mexico City that proved to be unable to overcome the floods in the city. When it is done and operated at full capacity, the Eastern Drainage Tunnel is going to be able to drain 150 m3/s stormwater out of Mexico City. Viviana Rangel

Chile - Repealment of the Water CodeUnder the dictatorship era, Chilean Government decided to privatize water resources by granting the state the right to grant water-use rights to private companies free of charge and for a very long period. The code also allowed private companies to use their share of water without taking into consideration local water use. This problematic code was finally repealed in 2005 and the Chilean Government has been trying to put back social equity and environmental concerns in their righteous place ever since.Vanida Salgado

Botswana - Okavango Delta Management PlanTourism activity in Okavango Delta, the only perennial river in Africa that flows eastwards without ever reaching the ocean, is placed as a highly potential alternative for increasing the national revenue. To sustain the high-end quality of the delta, the Bostwana Government initiates a holistic approach in managing the whole delta area. They devolve the management to the lowest level of each com-munity in the area within the acceptable ecological limits and relevant economic context. The management plan itself heavily relied on wide consultation and collaborative actions among involved stakeholders.

Cameroon - Degassing of Lake Nyos In 1986, an enormous amount of CO2 gas was released from Lake Nyos, an active volcanic crater lake in Cameroon that was formed about 500 years ago. The heavy gas flew down to the inhabited areas and killed people up to 25 km away from the lake. While the scientific world is still debating the reason behind this sudden CO2 release, most of them agreed that something had happened in the lake which triggered the upward movement of CO2-riched layer that has been trapped in the bottom of the lake for a long time. More studies revealed that there is a continuously CO2 formation happening at the bottom of the lake, so an attempt to degas the deep zones of the lake using electronic pump was made in 2001.

Water

3131

Cyprus - Desalination of Seawater and Greywater Recycling for Drinking Water SupplyAs an island country surrounded by saltwater, Cyprus maintains its drinking water supply by turning seawater into freshwater and recycling their municipal greywater. To deal with the high requirement of energy for operat-ing the drinking water treatment plant with desalination, recent studies supported by the Cyprus Government direct toward the implementation of renewable energy. Maria Evangelou and Athina Pappa

Australia - Wivenhoe Dam Optimization PlanDeemed as the largest water storage in South East Queensland, the total storage capacity of this dam is 2.6 million mega liters with normal supply capacity as much as 1.15 million mega liters and flood capacity at 1.45 million mega liters at the maximum. Following the 2010-2011 severe floods in Brisbane and Ipswich, the Queensland Government conducted an optimization study and provisions for Wivenhoe dam. The optimization actions include higher releases earlier in a flood event, reducing the dam safety compartment without causing an unacceptable risk to the dam, and maintain the current level of the water supply compartment for water supply security.Khalif Jusuf

China - Yangtze River Rehabilitation ProgramStretched over 6300 kilometres, Yangtze River is the largest river in China. It has a drainage area of approximately 1.8 million km2 and inhibited by over 400 million people. In recent years, due to nation’s rapid economic growth, the river has suffered from heavy industrial pollution, agricultural run-off, siltation, and loss of flood plains. Chinese Government launched EFCA (Ecosystem Function Conservation Areas) programs that will increase the water retention capacity of the river basin and reduce the sediment loads along the river.Hillary Wang

Iran - Urban Areas Drinking Water OveruseThe surge of population in several urban areas in Iran posed as a potential threat for the continuity of the nation’s drinking water supply, especially in Great Teheran where 12 million out of 75 million Iranian lives. Recent studies point out that domestic water use in Iran is already 70% higher than the global average. This condition combined with the fact that precipitation has decreased over the past years might possibly lead to the implementation water rationing system in the capital.Reza Nejad

India - Anthropological Issues in Clean Water DistributionStudies point out that the caste-based clean water distribution system in rural India has cost people from certain caste their access to clean water. This in-equalities issue which is closely connected to fundamental life principles of the people living in rural India had raised concern from within the country itself. One of the most effective solutions that is offered was to increase the opportunity for lower caste community to provide clean water for themselves. This considered more effective because in this way the water dependency to the regional government, which often rules by the higher caste, is lessened. Parvathy Chandrasekar

World

Hujan, Benar benar hujan, Banjir.Rain, All that rain, Flooding. These are well-known fraises and words here in Jakarta. In the rainy season it can rain so inten-sively and for such a long period, that the streets and storm water drainage can’t cope with all the water and turn into rivers, the rivers can’t cope with the water and turn into over-flowing bathtubs and the polder in the north becomes a sink for the sea that overflows because of high tide. I have been so lucky as to see the beginning of this flood-ing yesterday during my bike ride through one of the heaviest rains I have seen in my time here in Jakarta, and to see the end of it Friday last week when I drove to a part in the north that had been inundated. As many of you might know, Jakarta is started to be called the new Atlantic city. Predictions are made saying the city will be sunk in 25 years, or maybe even sooner. What was first called climate change and sea level rise, turns out to be a massive and rapid land subsidence, with a mean rate of 7.5 - 10 cm/year, and a maximum rate of 17.9 cm/year in some places, cre-ating a previously normal city in a delta, into a polder. How this land subsidence is caused is debated on heavily and views range from natural compaction and heavy city loads, to over extraction of groundwater, to tectonic movements. Whatever is causing the subsidence, the subsidence at least clearly causes flooding in this metropolitan city.Flooding is such a common thing here, that when it happens it’s pretty normal to be late and say, banjir. It explains everything immediately. It seems like a second nature for the citizens of Jakarta to be prepared to move all their belongings to the upper floor or to walk through the inundated streets. And it’s even more normal that almost everything stops working. The day after the flooding of the north of Jakarta (in the night of 22 to 23 of January), I watched the Dutch news. It had been snowing and the train rails were frozen, creating a stop of trains all through the Randstad, and a delay in many other trains. That was the first time I realized that even in the Neth-erlands, we can’t stop mother nature. Turns out we Dutch are not so different from the Indonesians. We cope with winter, they cope with rain. At that particular Friday however, I turned out to be exactly at the right spot, at the southern most part of the North, were the inundation just started, in the office of the local sub-dis-trict. For my research it turned out that the trip was pretty useless, the officers were all in the field, trying to map the

flooding. I did however speak to a couple of people there, and they started asking me why we Dutch never had a flooding, while we also lived under sea level. Also, the remark came that the Dutch had put up such a good drainage system, and then they left and the Indonesians messed it up. Sometimes, I am truly surprised on the attitude of the Indonesians against the Dutch. Apparently no grudge at all exists, while we did some pretty horrible things here before we left. Things that are not (yet) taught at the Dutch schools, and seemingly maybe nei-ther here. The Monday after, I saw an article in the Jakarta Post explain-ing the cause of this major flooding. The heading said: “Ahok blames ministry project in Sunter for Friday flood”, Ahok being the Governor of Jakarta. What happened? A dredging project contractor initiated by the Public Works Ministry, destroyed a 215-meter long embankment to make way for heavy equip-ment. They had almost completely rebuilt the embankment, except for a 35-meter long section. For a flooding to occur, a 35-meter section will do just as well as a 215-meter section. The first question that pops up into your mind when you read this, is “Why the hell would you do this in the rainy season!!!”. That was exactly the thing that Governor Basuki Ahok did not understand. A couple of my colleagues from Deltares do not share his view though. They were in the field and also analyzed the rainfall intensity. According to Aditya Ifan and Bayu Raharja the most significant factor was local rainfall; since it was an event of around 100-200 mm rainfall a day. And of course, other factors were also named, like for example the too low bridges creat-ing bottlenecks, trash racks filled with trash creating blockings, and too low pump capacities. The Sunter project was certainly not the only problem. The construction on the embankments are not the only flood-related works going on in the city. The city has allocat-ed 2.7 trillion Indonesian Ruppies for flood-related projects in 2015 alone (Jakarta Post). A lot of Dutch companies are also working together with the Indonesian Government, to realize a project that shuts of the Jakarta Bay with a huge dam and land reclamations forming islands, called the Great Garuda plan or the NCICD. There is much and more to tell about this all, so maybe when I’m back I will write some more on Jakarta and on what I am doing here related to these problems. Tosh (cheers) everybody, and greetings from Jakarta! S

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Author:Sandra de Vries

Flooding in JakartaProject abroad

Water management in another country from yours can be a complex enigma with unexpected parameters to take into ac-count! The local characteristics of each system can make the system unique. Here is an example. How can a very innocent, healthy and natural product become a top problem for water managers? In areas in the Mediterranean region, the cultivation of olive trees and the products coming from them are a type of agri-culture practice established for more than 7000 years and the consumption of olive oil has an increasing trend worldwide due to its high nutritional characteristics.Olive oil is the liquid product of the traditional press extrac-tion of olives which takes place in olive mills. The extraction method and the three-phase decanter process are two com-mon procedures used in olive oil production. The basic prod-ucts coming out of this procedure are the olive oil and the waste. The stream of waste contains wet solid waste, called ‘crude olive cake’, and the aqueous waste called ‘olive mill waste water’. In simple terms, the solid waste is what remains after the olives had been pressed and is a mixture of olive pulp with olive stones and nowadays it can be used as solid fuels. On the other hand, the olive oil waste water treatment and disposal require a lot of attention because of the characteris-tics of this effluent. The effluent of the olive mills, which worldwide is estimated at 7 to 30 millions m3, is a mixture of vegetation water, soft tissues of the olive fruit, and water used at the different phases of the oil production which contain olive pupl, mucilage, pectin, etc. Although, in terms of volume generated, it is considered not as important as other waste water i.e. the domestic sew-age, its seasonality and the big environmental pollution which can cause, are the basic characteristics that made the olive mills waste water a scientific research field. From chemical point of view, the olive mill waste water has strong and offensive smell and a very high organic content, with COD as high as220 g/l and the ratio of COD/BOD5 be-tween 2.5 and 5. Its pH is between 3 and 5.9 and it also has high content of polyphenols-up to 80g/l, which are not easily biodegradable. More over it has high content of solid matter up to 20g/l and is considered toxic. In order to give an idea about the pollution effect of the olive mill waste water, it can

be said that 1 m3 of olive mill waste water is equivalent to 100-200 m3 of domestic sewage. If the olive mill waste water is disposed without control in wa-ter reservoirs serious problems will occur, especially at natural water bodies like surface and ground water reservoirs, sea-shore and sea. The effect that is most easily spotted by people is the discoloration of the stream water, due to oxidation and polymerization of tannins. This waste water also has a signifi-cant amount of reduced sugars, with high phosphorous con-tent and phenolic load, which are toxic to some aquatic organ-isms. However, there are some microorganisms which able to metabolize sugars and develop faster against other organisms. Moreover, due to the high phosphorous content the growth of algae is encouraged, resulting to eutrophication. Due to the problems mentioned above, the design of an olive mill treatment plant is more challenging. The intense and the seasonal production of the waste for about 4 months each winter, the variability of the synthesis and the quantity, the re-gional and small size of olive mills can raise some design prob-lems. Olive mills are often present as small scale enterprises and it is difficult for them to afford the cost of expensive prop-er wastewater treatment, unless there is a treatment simple and cheap. Some of the widely-used methods for the treatment of ol-ive oil waste water are the bioremediation (ex-situ, in-situ), thermal processes (incineration, pyrolysis, gasification), evapo-ration, membrane processes, electrolysis, ozonation, digestion, coagulation/flocculation/precipitation, and distillation. Also, in the framework of European Life project (Project LIFE07/INF/IT/438) a list with existing commercial technologies was cre-ated after the in-situ inspection of the partners of the specific project. There is still a lot of research to be done in order to opti-mize the treatment of the olive mill waste water. The meth-ods should lead to an environmentally friendly and sustainable disposal of the waste water to the nature systems and also be suitable to be applied by the small enterprises not only in technological terms but also from financial aspects, which will influence the level of appliance by people, who are responsible for the olive mill waste water. S

Olive mill wastewater at Falasarna beach (photo from cretalive.gr)

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Author:Athina Pappa

Olive mill wastewater Greece

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Symposium 2015

Water as aWeapon

Photos: Frank Auperlé

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During aerobic treatment of wastewater a lot of excess sludge is produced. This excess sludge can effectively be reduced when digested anaerobically by convert-ing it into biogas. Hydrolysis is the rate limiting step in the anaerobic digestion process. Anaerobic bacteria cannot take up these large molecules and therefore excrete exo-enzymes, which break them up in smaller parts. Increasing the effi-ciency of this hydrolysis process will re-duce the retention time and therewith the size needed for anaerobic digesters, increase the conversion of COD of the influent into biogas and reduce the costs of waste sludge disposal. Worm preda-tion of the excess sludge has shown to decrease the amount of total suspended solids and increase the overall biodeg-radability of the organic matter. Could a worm reactor pre-hydrolyse the excess sludge before it goes to the anaerobic reactor? Unfortunately little is known about how worms can improve the sludge for anaer-obic digestion. The conversion of sludge in a worm reactor can be the result of either enzymatic or mechanical/chemi-cal mechanisms of the worms. If there is enzymatic breakdown of TSS and VSS, it can be done either by a microbial community inside and surrounding the worms, or by the worms themselves or by both the worms and the microbial community. Together with Steef de Valk and Ahmad Khadem, I experimented with the worms to figure out if either the microbial community or the worm itself is essential for the hydrolysis.

Tubifex-wormsThe worms used in the experiments are aquatic worms, of the species Tubifex. The worms were stored in a small aer-ated aquarium and were obtained from a fish-feed producer. A fish-aquarium is generally very hard to maintain: fish are very vulnerable to water quality, algae can grow extensively, fish get ill very quickly because of cross breading, etc. But why bother with fish? Worms are great fun! You can take them out of the water to show them to guests. They ac-tually like bad water quality. They don’t need a specific type of food. You can go on holiday for weeks. And together, they form all kinds of nice ball shapes.

Experimental setupWe placed the worms in batches with sterile water and fed them with the coloured protein azo-casein. The amount

of protein in the batch was determined by measuring the colour or light absorp-tion in a photo spectrometer. A sam-ple from the batch was taken and the remaining un-hydrolysed proteins were precipitated by adding a strong acid (TCA). By pushing the sample through a 0.45μm filter the precipitated un-hy-drolysed protein was removed from the sample. The colour of the filtered sample indicated the amount of hydrolysed pro-tein. We took samples three times a day to compare them with the kinetics. By adding antibiotics, we tried to kill or deactivate the bacteria in the worms to check whether the worms could hydro-lyse the proteins themselves. We tested two types of antibiotics – streptomycin and tetracycline – and incubated the worms for various days before the pro-tein would be dosed. Both antibiotics block the protein synthesis in bacteria and therefore limit the growth of bacte-ria. They should therefore limit the me-tabolism of bacteria, the reproduction and even reduce the number of bacteria, which would result in a reduced hydrol-ysis of azo-casein.

Reality Initially, this seemed to be true: the results showed lines of different con-version rates and total conversion for batches with and without antibiotics. However, the experimental results were not reproducible when we improved the setup by reducing the chance of infec-tion or the chance of worms dying. The number of worms for which the exper-iment was fatal is uncountable – we had to kill those worms that had been in contact with antibiotics – so after fin-ishing the experiments I must have lost a lot of karma… Therefore, I discarded the antibiotics and tried something else. The bacteria in the intestines of the worms were also found around the worms. After taking some liquid from a previous batch in which hy-drolysis was observed and dosing it to a batch with only protein and no worms, this batch had a higher conversion of protein than a batch without such a dose. The same effect was observed by washed and un-washed worms from a previous experiment and placing them in new batches: the conversion rate of protein in batches with washed worms was lower than with un-washed worms. The bacteria that come with the worms seem to play a crucial role in the hydrol-ysis. Perhaps those bacteria can be culti-

Shit-Eating Worms

Author:Frans Willem

Hamer

Lab Setup

vated and used as a pre-treatment step. This wouldn’t mean that a worm reactor cannot be a good pre-treatment for an anaerobic reactor. Perhaps they crush and compact the TSS into “faecal pellets” which makes it more easily degradable.

Final thoughtsThings never work out like you want to – especially in the lab. All you can do is to try your best and be creative in finding new ways of approaching your subject. In any project, time is the limiting factor – with more time I think I would have been able to manage to produce the re-sult I wanted – but it also stimulates you to push a little harder. Over time your thinking evolves and in the end you re-alise that you should have done, decided or thought about things earlier. Because of that, three months is a bit short to make the subject all yours. You can never be satisfied with the re-sults if you haven’t reached your goal. But perhaps that’s the tragedy of the lab. Also the goals you have set might have been unrealistic. Perhaps in the future someone else will figure it out, although you would rather see yourself do it. But there is also beauty in doing something that comes with a lot of uncertainties. And when you encounter something alike next time, you know what to do.

For a long time, I sent in photos of kay-aking for every photo contest the Drup-pel organized. [red: this is not true. Mister Collenteur sent us this picture only once…] With these photos never being selected and the committee getting annoyed [red: this is true], you understand how happy I was when they asked me to write an article about one of my latest kayaking trips to Uganda. We all have a (profes-sional) passion for water. Here I would like to share mine!For many years I have been wanting to go to the White Nile in Uganda, a real paradise for freestyle kayakers that at-tracts paddlers from all over the world. The first time I started thinking about going here was seven years ago, when the Bujagali Dam was being built that flooded several sections of classic white-water. Now, seven years later, the highly controversial Isimba Dam is being engi-neered and might soon flood what is left of the whitewater and the ecosystem on the Nile – I will get back to this later. Considering the above and knowing that the Nile River is the perfect place to get in shape for the 2015 competition sea-son, tickets were booked and working on my thesis delayed!The flight to Entebbe, Uganda, was super easy, as Brussel Airlines allows you to fly your boat for free – a rarity I have nev-er had before flying my boat around the world. A three-hour cab ride later we (a friend and me) arrived to what would be our home for the next three weeks: the Hairy Lemon. This is a green lush island in the middle of the Nile, 5 minutes pad-dling away from two world class waves. Meals are prepared for you three times a day and the only thing you really have to

care about is whether the water level is good for paddling or not. I think ‘Sleep-eat-kayak-repeat’ describes our days here best. With 800 m3/s coming down the Nile, the whitewater is big, and the waves even bigger.Now, I could talk about kayaking for an-other 1000 words, but let me get back the that controversial Isimba Dam. Off course, being a kayaker I prefer the idea of free-flowing rivers, but I can’t deny the need for new energy sources to fuel Uganda’s ongoing development. Howev-er, there’s more to this story than just the kayakers point of view,which for you would be rather boring I guess. With the construction of the Bujagali Dam that finished in 2012, the Ugandan govern-ment agreed with the World Bank, that is financing the Bujagali Dam, on the ‘Kalagala Offset Sustainable Management Plan’. This Indemnity Agreement basically committed the Ugandan Government to conserve what is left of the ecosystem, including the whitewater rapids, and promote tourism development activities.The Isimba Dam, depending on its size, could flood this entire conservation area and terminate all the tourism activities related to the river. It has been estimat-ed that 50,000 jobs in the area around Jinja are directly or indirectly related to river activities1. The current impact as-sessment made for the Isimba project misses an overall quantitative cost-ben-efit analysis2, which could provide a bet-ter insight on the overall effect of the sustainability of the dam project. I do not have a final conclusion to this sto-ry, nor do I pretend to know what the exact impact of the dam will be and if it will be beneficial to Uganda as a coun-

1. http://www.interna-tionalrivers.org/

2. http://www.nema-ug.org/reports/

3. http://www.kayakses-sion.com/

Freestyle kayaking is a discipline in kayaking, where one tries to surf a standing (river) wave and perform tricks on it. The boats used are rather short, ±180cm, allowing you to throw loops, cartwheels and basically any other rotation around any axis. In a competition, you will get 45 seconds rides to perform as many (high) scoring moves as possible. The White Nile has many of such world class standing waves, and combined with warm weather and water it forms the perfect train-ing ground to prepare for the 2015 competition season! Search for “ Jackson Kayak Rockstar- Uganda” on Youtube to get an idea of what I am talking about!

Author:Raoul Collenteur

try. I do know local communities will be heavily impacted, ecosystems will be lost and that the development of the dam is controversial to what is agreed upon in the Indemnity agreement between the World Bank and the Ugandan Govern-ment. There is an interesting video on this for those interested, you can find the link on the side3.The White Nile forms an interest-ing case study for us water managers, where many interests (tourism, ecology, energy) come together and hydropower projects impact many parts of society. It was amazing experience to finally go to this place, do that three-day safari to Murchison Falls National park and pad-dle two times a day. This river really is a rare thing in the world, where tourists can experience the energy of 800 m3/s of water coming down, in relatively save rapids and large waves. If you are ever in Uganda, visit the White Nile before it’s too late! S

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Sports Kayaking on the wild White Nile

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Can you tell us more about who you are, especially for the all the new students here in the Water Management Department. What is the story of Prof. Rietvield?“I was a student too here in TU, back in 1979, when it was still called Delft Technische Hogeschool. I started as a Physics Engi-neering student, though only for three months until I realized that I was missing something. I wanted to do something that has more connection to the society, something that can give impacts directly to the society. So my friend told me that it is better for me to change program to Civil Engineering and I did that. I chose Water Management for my specialization after a very inspirational water management project in Nicaragua that I did in the beginning of my master year. “

Now we know how you ended up in the water management world, but we understand that drinking water is widely known as your territory. How did you got in to that?“It all started with Mozambique. Okay… first of all I have to tell you that after I graduated I really wanted to go abroad and worked in developing countries. There were two reasons, first because I really fond of my experience in Mozambique. It touched me and I wanted to do that again. And the second reason was because at that time there was this conscription rule where you have to do military service for a certain period of time. But, it is not necessary if you spend two years or more abroad for social works. “So back to the topic, I was wondering how to get in to an in-ternational project when suddenly an offer came. It was some-thing about developing a new sanitary engineering course in the local university in Mozambique. He asked me, ‘Are you up for the task, Luuk?’ Of course I said yes directly! So we went to Mozambique and worked there for four years. My main tasks

were to develop all types of teaching materials along with sev-eral researches in sanitary engineering field.”

What happened after Mozambique ? How did you start your career here at the TU?“After Mozambique, I decided to come back to The Nether-lands and work for the university. They asked me if I could help them in Management Centre for International Co-oper-ation, based on my experiences working abroad in developing countries. It was a short period, only from 1991 until 1994. Hereafter I realized how much I missed working in water man-agement field and to be more involved in it. That was why in 1994 or 1995 I applied to be a part of the Water Management Department. “Personally, the reason why I wanted to continue my academ-ic career here was because at that time research was not very developed yet and it get me thinking, now that I am in a research environment I wanted to know more about water treatment. I did my PhD as a part-time activity because I also did other work for the department. Actually, I was one of the very first people defending PhD in drinking water treatment sector. After that I became an assistant professor and then an associate professor. Finally in 2010 I was appointed as a full-time professor here. The amazing thing is that even though I have been in this department for a very long time I always found new challenges.”

In your new function as department head, do you have any particular new idea you want to add here in the Department? Any innovation you want to bring?“Well personally, I think innovation should be gradual and of course we have to match what we want to do with the oppor-

After a lot of emails and visits to Water Management’s secretary office, Druppel finally got an appointment with Prof. dr. Luuk Rietveld. Our curiosity grew overtime: How does it feel to be inside a very busy man’s agenda? We took a trip down his past and talked about how his journey along the years has shaped him and his feeling towards becoming the new Head of Water Management Department.

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An in-depth interview with prof. dr. ir. Luuk Rietveld

Interviewer:Agnindhira Napitupulu

Interview

tunity that appears in the university too, being an integrated part of the organization. There are three important things that I will pay more attention to, related to my capacity as the Head of the Department, these are research, education, and funding. “For improving funding, we have to find out possibilities to team up with companies so we have extra money to do re-search and expand our capacity. For education, I want to at-tract as many as possible potential great (master) students in to the department. “Aside for its high relevancy to recent matters, there is a high demand for well-educated water managers and sanitary engi-neers. There are two ways to attract more students, first we can try to reach the people who have the potential. Secondly, we can try to be more visible to the civil engineering bachelor students, try to show them how interesting it is to study mas-ter in Water Management program.”

For you traveling abroad to work in water management issues is a very good experience for the students?“Yes! Travelling abroad is the best method of learning. The rea-sons are: First, when you travel you take yourself with you and you become more aware of what your strong points are as well as your weak points. You will be able to develop those strong points. It will make you realize of your ability to func-tion in a totally different environment. Second, you will also able to see a lot of different water systems, ones that don’t work and others that are perfectly operated. Travelling to a lot of different places will broaden your knowledge a lot.”

It seems that you have plenty of experience working abroad. Can you tell us your most interesting project, so far?“Well that’s quite hard because they each have their own uniqueness which makes them interesting in a certain way. Maybe it is the first project that I’ve ever done, the one in Nicaragua. There were seven of us, students from all different backgrounds. Our task was to make an evaluation on the wa-ter supply in this small village in Nicaragua. So we went there and we evaluated the system but we didn’t stop there. We also built and improved their clean water communal well. People there still remember me until now.”

With all these occupations, how do you balance everything?“Well, I work for 60-70 hours a week. Sometimes things are a little bit unbalance, because I have a lot of interests and I always say yes, and then I get the conclusion that it’s too much. One thing I’m doing now is to adjust the number of my PhD students, with some of them are now graduating I will be more selective in getting the new ones. If you have fewer students you will have more time to supervise them.”

It seems that you don’t have so much spare time, what do you do to refresh or regain your energy in such limited free time?“I like to say that my work is part of my spare time because all my colleagues are my friends. Sometime we have meetings while we go out and have dinner, then after the real meeting we can talk about something other than just work. For me it is not a problem that my personal life is mixed with work things and vice versa.“I also enjoy walking all my three dogs two times a day; in the morning before I go to the University and then in the evening

after I get home. I also do some sport, I play field hockey with a group of friends. We have a little league and we called it The Competition of The Veterans. We play every Sundays, just friends having fun playing and drinking beers together.”

We always ask the professors if they have advice for students, looking back to your experience as a student, do you have something you want to share?“Inspiration is very important. I had a hard time during the first three years of my study because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Once you are inspired you can see the whole system better, you can see the link between courses. When you want to make progress in your study, take your study as being work. Be more disciplined toward your study.”

What advice will you give to the students that are just gradu-ated or about to start their career?“It is always better to know where you want to work already, even from before you start your thesis. Then it is good to do your graduation thesis with that company. Especially if you are an international student, it’s not that easy to enter the Dutch market because most of the time you don’t speak Dutch. But if you already have positive experience between you and the company during your graduation thesis then they are more open to offer you a job.“I always advise the students to pass by their professor after they had graduated and ask for a list of contact persons that can be asked about work application. We have personal con-tact with a lot of directors of the relevant department, or even the company itself. If we say to them that we believe in you and send them your CV, you will at the very least get an interview.You also see that now the world demand of well-educated wa-ter managers is increasing more and more. That’s why we see a lot of opportunity for our students, so keep on trying and more importantly work for things that you love the most.”S

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Interview

Last December I went to Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, to conduct interviews for my thesis. My thesis discusses the infor-mation gap between decision makers and scientists in these countries. Thus I needed to do interviews with decision makers: (old) ministers, advisors and other people involved in the decision making process. In Egypt and Sudan I would have a contact person who would help me get in touch with the inter-viewees and help me get to their offices. Ethiopia would be a bit different. There I would have to figure out myself who to talk to and how to get to them. Despite having put a lot of time in preparing my interviews, I was still afraid that it would all go horribly wrong. What if they did not want to talk to a girl from the Neth-erlands? What if I did the interviews wrong? My first interview in Egypt was with my contact person, so that went well. The two after that, not so much. In the sec-ond interview there were a man and a woman, instead of only the man I ex-pected. He thought it would be good if this woman joined as well. In all the books I read on interviewing before I went there, I had read that you should try to avoid interviewing more than one person at a time. But how was I going to tell this man that this was not what I wanted? He was years older, well ed-ucated and an important man in the ministry, so I did not say anything and tried to make the most of it. The next interview was even worse. This man was leading the conversation (also something you should try to avoid when doing in-terviews) and I had a hard time getting to all my questions.Back at the hotel, I wondered why on earth I thought it would be fun to do interviews in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. How was I going to survive a whole month of this on my own? Apart from

the fact that conducting interviews was hard and tiring (especially in a different culture), it was also hard to be on my own in Cairo. Walking around Cairo is a constant struggle to avoid and shake off men that are either trying to sell you something or are interested in a west-ern woman travelling on her own. I tried wearing a headscarf but that did not keep them away either. Even in the hos-tel I did not feel completely at ease, be-cause the manager was a bit too friendly.But after a few days I started getting bet-ter at it. One evening I even played back-gammon with an Egyptian guy, outside at one of the many “cafés” – a bunch of plastic chairs and tables, in the middle of an alley. It was still a bit uncomfortable though, because he kept staring into my eyes whenever I would take them of the board. The interviews also went well, af-ter I just got used to the fact that when you are doing interviews, not one is ex-actly the same as the other and it never goes as you have planned.Still it was very nice to arrive in Khar-toum (Sudan), where I booked a more expensive hotel (also because there are no hostels in Sudan). The hotel was run by Greeks and was filled with Europe-ans doing research in Sudan. The first evening at dinner I sat down at a table with a guy who introduced himself and told me he was from Belgium. When I asked him enthusiastically: “Oh, so you speak Dutch?”, I heard a voice behind me saying: “I do too!”. So that first night in Khartoum I had a dinner with a Bel-gian and a Dutch, feeling a bit less lonely. The interviews in Sudan went quite well, although I had to do a lot of waiting. They would tell me to wait for them, that they would have time after the meeting and then they would not show up. So the next day, I had to come back and wait again. Also, I drank a lot of coffee. Every person you meet offers you coffee, and

even if you refuse, you still get it. The rest of the time in Sudan was quite unevent-ful. I spent most of the days and evenings in the hotel, sitting outside my room in the sun or doing some work in my room. Some nights I went out for dinner with some of the other guests and I did a city tour. But most of the time I was either at the ministry to do interviews (or to wait) or in my hotel.After Sudan I went to Ethiopia. There I would first attend a conference on “New Nile Opportunities” organized by the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Of-fice (ENTRO) in cooperation with Un-esco-IHE and after that I had to try to interview Ethiopian decision makers. In Ethiopia I did not have someone helping me, so I had to find people by myself. The first opportunity to find people to interview would be at the conference. The first day I did not really manage to speak to anyone. I was already very nervous for my presentation the next day and I could not really bring myself to also start networking. That night at the hotel I was a bit angry with myself. How did I think I would get to talk to anyone in Ethiopia, if I could not even speak to the people at the conference. Luckily, the next day after my presentation I felt less nervous and I actually managed to talk to some people. Also people had seen my presentation and wanted to talk to me about it, so frankly, it was not only me suddenly being social that made the networking easier. That night I went for some beers with some of the European and American participants. It was nice to be able to just be myself and not constantly have to wonder if I was behaving correctly. But after that I started to feel lonelier by the day. Ethiopia is not as bad as Cairo, but there as well men are constantly staring and shouting things. Even at ENTRO (the international river basin organization),

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Author:Marlies Barendrecht

Three countries of the Eastern Nile River BasinThesis

where I thought that I could at least talk to the people and let my guard down a bit, there were apparently still guys who thought I was an easy target. Since I was staying in Addis Ababa (Ethi-opia) for two weeks and I also wanted to interview some of the people at EN-TRO, they gave me a desk to work at. During one of the coffee breaks one of the interns was helping me with my phone which was not working. After that he started talking to me on facebook. I politely replied but tried to not ask any questions, so as to not to encourage him. Then, during the weekend he sent me a text to tell me that he loved me. Of course I did not reply, but that did not put him off, he just kept on sending mes-sages. Luckily the second week he went to Sudan, so I would not see him again. But even after blocking him on facebook, he just switched to emailing. Now he has stopped, but I do hope he does not get the opportunity to study at Unesco-IHE, or at least not until I have left Delft.In the weekend I went to Lake Tana and Lalibela to see the monasteries and churches. It was very beautiful and al-though I did feel a bit guilty that I was away and not busy trying to arrange more interviews I am glad that I went. Ethiopia is a very nice country with a lot of history and I would really love to go there alone, although next time I will bring a guy with me.When I got back to Addis Ababa I still had a week to conduct some interviews. Luckily I had already managed to get some names and arrange some meetings the week before, so in the end I was also able to get enough data in Ethiopia.All in all, it was a wonderful and produc-tive journey, but after a month I was glad to go home.In the last couple of months people have asked me the question: “Why do this re-search? Anyone can do social research. Now, here at the TU, you have the op-portunity to learn to model. The social stuff, you can always do that.” During the months before I left I often wondered the same. But now that I am back I am very glad that I am doing this research. Modelling and other technical stuff I can always teach myself later, if I need it. But during this trip and also during the rest of my research I have learned a lot that I would not have learned, had I not done this research. I learned to (try to) look at the information that we generate and that we want the decision makers and policy makers to use the way they do, and that is something that I find very valuable. S

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Coming from the Netherlands we tried to explain to a lot of people in Kenya that the only predator we ever saw was in a zoo, and that the largest wild predator occurring in the Neth-erlands is a fox. It was hard to imagine for the Kenyan people. And go figure, of course it is. If we tell our friends here that we did measurements next to a river, while throwing rocks into the water in order to make sure we weren’t gonna be eaten alive by crocodiles, they find it hard to imagine as well. We are truly a world apart.So, who are we then? We are six Water Management and Hy-draulic Engineering students from the Technical University of Delft who joined Christopher Dutton on a 6-week trip around the Mara River Basin. In order to fulfill a part of our studies, we were able to do a multidisciplinary project for the Mau Mara Serengeti Sustainable Water (MaMaSe) Initiative. Since the In-itiative just started and almost no data was available, it would be our task to gather as much data as possible and install me-teorological stations and water level loggers.No sooner said than done, we arrived in Kenya where we met up with the local authorities and associations. We explained to them what we intended to do in their basin, and they gave input on what was important not to forget. We also borrowed their RiverSurveyor, a very crucial measurement device dur-ing the project as it measures discharge and bottom profiles. We also did water quality measurements, slope measurements and morphological observations. By combining these meas-urements with the installation of time-lapse cameras and the experimental remote data transferring water level loggers and weather stations, we intended to provide the Initiative with a good data supply for the coming years and with stage-dis-charge relations for the rivers in the basin.The plan was simple but busy. In six weeks we toured around the Mara Basin twice, passing by all the different areas like the Mau Forest, the inhabited upper basin around Bomet and Mulot, the reserve where we stayed at Maji Camp, the Talek and the remote Sand River. At several places we were assisted by people from the local associations and tourist camps, who showed us good measurement places or allowed us to install a device in their area. Together with Chris and Shadrak, our

driver and friend, we crossed paths with lions fighting with cheetahs, wildebeests lying dead in the river, hippos and their babies, and much more! It was an incredible way of working, being on a safari for almost half of the trip. In Maji Camp, the research camp in the reserve, we slept between the elephants and hippos and showered while having a nice view of game trails of zebras and warthogs.At the end of the project there were 16 meteorological sta-tions and 11 water level loggers working and they are still sending data every half hour to the internet. They Ensure that everybody can now know how much rain falls in for example Bomet and what the water level is at the New Mara Bridge. We also succeeded in creating seven stage-discharge rela-tions for different places throughout the Mara Basin. So with a known water level, a discharge can immediately be determined giving information on how much water is in the basin. This information combined with other data we gathered, can now be used by the MaMaSe Initiative to find where there is water shortage, if there are possibilities in storing water, influences on water quality and hopefully much more.

DaveDuring our stay in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, we encoun-tered some things that are definitely worth sharing with the lovely folks of the Water Management Dispuut. On the first day we went into town by a local bus. Getting into the bus is difficult without help. Luckily there were multiple Kenyan ladies waving at busses to stop them for us, after which we had to run and jump in the bus while it was slowing down and took off immediately after we got in. The inside of one of the busses was covered with Rick Ross pictures and only played reggae music. Amazing.We also encountered some big guys with guns in Nairobi. While standing at the ATM, Rick took a picture of the building and suddenly two guys, armed with the biggest guns you can ever imagine, come out of the building taking Rick to the side and start questioning him about the picture. Luckily he could just remove it and didn’t get killed. Would have been a pity.At the end of the trip when we got back in Nairobi we had

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Authors:The Dutch6: Dave de Koning Rick van der Meijs Annouk ReyGuus RongenSandra de VriesJoreen Merks

A tour around the Mara BasinKenya

some more fun. We stayed in the YMCA-hostel, which is always fun, and enjoyed a meal in the Carnivore Restaurant. Carnivore is a restaurant that serves meat roasted on swords above a nice, big fire. We ate crocodile, ostrich, ox-balls, chicken liver and other delicious types of meat. They tried to trick us by serving some salads and bread, but we didn’t (completely) fall for that!

RickBACKUP! That’s the word we used the most during our stay in Kenya. The long roadtrips in an old but reinforced Kenyan minivan are the perfect conditions for Dutch people to play some games. During our six week of travelling through the Mara Basin our favorite game was ‘Backup’, a mix of ‘Guess Who?’ and other typical Dutch games. It was a lot of fun and a good way of spending our time during the long trips, although our American supervisor Chris and Kenyan driver Shadrack thought otherwise. Each time that someone was getting head-aches of thinking really hard which name it could be and the moment that this person shouted out loud BACKUP when he/she knew the name, we scared the shit out of Chris and Shadrack. It was really funny how they reacted and they must have thought: weird people these Dutch people! Another nice car adventure happened when we traveled from Bomet trough the Mau Forest. We had to install a weather station up north of the forest. The duration of the trip for one way was estimated on one hour by Chris. We left at 8 o’clock in the morning and we arrived back at 8 o’clock in the evening. What went wrong? Well, there is only one road through the forest and we had to use that road to get to our destination. The weather gods were not in our favor that day because it rained the day before and the road was wet and slippery. The road is made of heavy red clay and when it’s wet it gets really sticky and slippery. The whole morning we were pushing and pulling the minivan out of the ditches. Hard work! At 1 p.m. we finally arrived at the site but we had only one hour to install the station and get on our way back. Dark storm clouds were visible above the forest so we needed to hurry up, otherwise we probably would get stuck in the forest. On our way back it

was the same story; we were pushing the car instead of that the car was driving us for 15 kilometers! Luckily a car fully packed with Kenyans had the same troubles as us, so together we managed to get our way out of the forest. A good example of Kenyan-Dutch teamwork! After a long day we finally arrived at the hotel, exhausted but with a nice adventure!

JoreenWild animals are not the only interesting mammals you find in Kenya. The little human cubs aka children are also an interest-ing feature of the country. They come in different shapes and sizes and levels of energy. Some common characteristics are: small, curious and shy, although exceptions are possible. Some of our encounters with them include them surrounding our vehicle in a great herd, pressing their noses up the windows and two of them climbing up the tree to get a better look at the DEM camera (our camera on a 6m stick). These are typical examples of the curious behaviors mentioned earlier.We also observed the children in their natural habitat when we were driving through villages and visiting a school terrain. Here the children were entertained by some members of the research team by swinging them round and round and deco-rating them with Dave’s birthday decorations. Another thing to get these children’s attention was throwing balloons out of the driving vehicle, to which they would then move as one.Dave even tried to train the children as his helpers, by letting them do the slope measurements and carry the DEM pole. It is still unclear whether he succeeded. Further research is recommended on this topic.

AnnoukDuring our fieldwork we made a lot of things: weather stations, friends, water level loggers, photos, and of course we hope we made a difference. But we also love the saying “If you can’t break it, it cannot be fun”, so next to making stuff we also did our best to mess some things up. Like a pick axe we lent from very nice owners of a camp, to dig a hole to install a weather station in. After taking a really bad ass looking picture with it, Annouk managed to break it in half at the first strike. We also

45

Kenya

had some trouble with the local power outlets. Apparently you cannot charge an American dremel, which happened to be the very precious property of our supervisor Chris, in a Kenyan socket. Unfortunately Guus figured that out after burning the wires. The hardest thing to break however was Annouks head. It had survived many bumpy rides, angry hippos and crocodiles in the river, and even a very challenging and acrobatic tree climbing session to install a time lapse camera where the buf-falo’s wouldn’t twerk it. Right after that we had to hurry home before dark, so she ran into the van, forgetting her head and slamming it to the roof of the van, causing a big ditch in the roof and a headache for the next few days. We sure broke a lot of stuff in Kenya, but at least while doing that we made some other things to: memories.

GuusThe nice thing about your stay in Kenya as a Mzungu (white person), is that people compare you to celebrities wherever you go, which makes you feel just a little special. When you are walking the streets of Nairobi, you are a movie star, and when you are going for a run, you are a famous football player. You expect Kenyans to be used to running, since they win most marathons. But when we were running they found it su-per-special. People were honking, screaming at you, laughing. I never understood why. The same happened when we were doing fieldwork. We had this boat to measure discharges and bottom profiles, which drew a lot of attention. People could stare at us all day. Staring is what Kenyans are good at. I think the best vocal response we got was: “WTF mzungu!”One of the things I will always remember is the stay at the Maji camp, which is a research camp in the middle of a forest in the Masai Mara. It is a bit like camping, which you might be used to do with your parents in the south of France. There even was an outdoor toilet on which you could properly sit and shit. This however was during the day. At night, the wild animals came to shelter in the forest. This was really great. You could hear elephants, leopards, hippo’s and even lions from very close. The problem of this gathering of animals was that you could not go outside, so going to the toilet became prob-lematic. This gives you two options: do it in a bottle, or stay really close to your tent. However due to the bad hygiene in Kenya, diarrhea is a common problem, which kind of forces you out of your tent. This makes a night in the Maji camp so much more of an adventure...

SandraThe moment somebody says Maji Camp, immediately a lot of great memories pop up. One especially always makes me laugh. Annouk had the reputation of being startled very easily. But one night she really proved that if something happened, it wouldn’t be her to freeze and scream, what Chris always claimed would happen. We were brushing our teeth next to the tent when Sandra asked Annouk, “do you hear that?”. An-nouk asked if Sandra was making a joke, but no, we really heard it: the sawing sound of a panther in a nearby tree . The moment Annouk realized that, she spit out her toothpaste and ran to the entry of the tent! Once safely inside the tent, she could relax again. However, in her fear and haste she turned out to have thrown her toothbrush on the ground while running for her live, which she found out the next morning when leaving the tent… The best food we had was also in Maji Camp since we could cook it ourselves and it wasn’t as greasy as all the other food we got. We found that food in Kenya could be summarized as being greasy, or dry, or sweet, or all these things at the same time. The people were also very good at giving something we did not order. We learned very fast not to turn those things down however, because maybe you would not get food at all then that evening. Lunches were a great mix of Kenian Indian chapattis with peanut butter, crisps, honey or tuna. We had a picnic almost every day on the savannah between the buffalo’s and wildebeests. But the greatest thing on this trip was truly the company I had. I want to thank my five group members for the great adventure. And I want to thank them for being there for each other when one of us was sad or sick. We had a lot of fun, good discussions, serious conversations, ideas, and most of all, now also great memories. S

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Kenya

So, in conclusion: keep on studying water management and go save the world! Just in case if someone called you and ask you to be the next movie hero ;) To be continued...

Want to contribute your idea about Water Management related Movies? Reach us at druppelDWM@gmail.com and pitch us your selection of movies. S

Do you ever have those moments where you feel like you’re losing your passion for the water management world? Do you even need a fancy hero to keep on working? Or have you ever had difficulties explaining your studies or your work to your friends? If it is true that 1 picture equals 1000 words, then let’s use 100000000 words to explain your story around water.

Choosing Pancakes Over Life? The dilemma between pancakes or life is real for Harold Crick, whose life in Stranger Than Fiction is suddenly interrupted by a voice narrating all events he is related to – but he is not able to talk back. We in WAM are related to water, climate, and the environment in general. How could we narrate events in movies that have to do with what we care about? Would we speak about what happens after colossal climatic change (Waterworld), claim that climate change is actually secretly promoted by extra-terrestrials (The Arrival), or even suggest that (other) extra-terrestrials want to eliminate humans because they’re destroying the planet (The Abyss)? Perhaps these movies could have been relevant for our environmental dilemmas, but unfor-tunately there are a few issues. The amount of water Kevin Costner sails his boat on is simply not available on Planet Earth. It would have been far more realistic if the liquid-breathing technique would have killed Bud (which would have saved us the Hollywood kiss at the end as well). And obviously we all know that the Vogons de-stroyed the Earth when constructing a hyperspatial express route – current Earth is the spare copy. The movies that for me offer the most realistic narrative is the trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean – and no, that is not because they use ships all the time. Captain Jack Sparrow simply shows us how human society should be understood: it is all planned out and simultaneously made up as we go along. By the way, Jules Hilbert, a literature professor consulted by Harold in Stranger Than Fiction, suggests that choosing between pancakes or life is “inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led, and of course the quality of the pancakes”. Maurits Ertsen

A View to a KillThe world famous spy, James Bond himself has once stumbled in to a severe water management problem. In this 007 instalment, among other world-shattering problems, he had to face an evil genius that was planning to blow up the lakes along Hayward and San Andreas faults in order to put the whole of Silicon Valley underwater. Of course like any Hollywood action movies ever produced, the bad guys always lose at the end and Silicon Valley remained safe. So, maybe we can pitch the scenario tested in the class, about the possibility to flood Schiphol airport, to the producers of the next James Bond movie!

Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesThis one is especially for those superheroes-comic loving water managers to be. The Ninja Turtles are four fictional teenage anthropomorphic turtles, which all so very well-trained in martial art. They have taken on battle against criminals and aliens, but for some reasons decided to hide themselves from so-ciety, by living in New York storm sewer system. So, just in case that you, as the leading Water Manager in our office, ever in need of new storm sewer system inspection techniques or any information about wrong connections of pipes and leakages, leave some hundreds of ninja turtles in the sewer system, feed them with pizza and get the information you need!

TitanicLet’s not forget about Titanic, the world (in-)famous boat, which on its launching trip from Unit-ed Kingdom to United States hit an iceberg and sank at the north Atlantic. But how exactly is the role of a water manager related to that movie? An iceberg is part of the global water cycle and is influenced by global warming. Glacier hydrology and field trips to glaciers for the risky ones can be the new challenge for the water managers. Hey Water Managers, save the travellers of north Atlantic from icebergs!

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Author:Athina Pappa

Water related moviesMiscelaneous

Recipee

All who have spent some time in the lab of sanitary engineering have the same experience: the smell makes you hungry. The odours of H2S and NH3 are simply irresistible. The century egg (or 1000-100 year old egg or pidan) is a Chinese culinary inven-tion to add that fragrance to your dinner. By following the steps below you can make this delicacy yourself. What turns the egg whites dark amber brown and the yolk dark purple is the anaerobic fermentation processes of the sea-salt and hydroxides reacting with the proteins. There are many different recipes for the brine, with varying concentrations of salts and even adding zinc and lead salts. The recipe below gives you a good start, but if you want to improve it, look for the papers about pidan written by Palanivel Ganasen and Soottawat Benjakul to obtain the perfect structure of your yolk and “white” by adjusting the concentrations of your muddy brine.

Ingredients: 18 fresh duck eggs (alternatively chicken or quail eggs). For the muddy brine:Chinese black tea1.5kg Rice chaff750ml wood ash750ml charcoal ash425g quicklime (CaO)160g sea salt (adding Na, K and Mg)

Tools:Large (tea)potA pH gauge Gloves (latex or plastic)A large plastic or porcelain mixing bowl (no metal!)Another plastic bowl to hold the rice chaffA large plateA large clay container or pot Enough soil and garden lime to fill the potFace mask (optional)

Procedure: Make a very strong tea of 1 litre – about 1 cup of tea per 10 cups of water. Leave the tea to cool for four hours to get really intense. Put on your gloves and your face mask!!! In the mixing bowl, put the wood and charcoal ashes with the lime and the sea salt. While mixing, add the tea until it reaches a muddy consistency with which you can cover the eggs – you might not need all the tea but don’t throw away the tea yet! Test the pH with your pH meter – it should be above 12, if not add some extra quicklime. Place the eggs for 15 to 20 minutes in the caustic mud. Mean-while, poor the rice chaff in the second bowl. Take out the eggs – make sure that the eggs are well covered – and coat them with the rice chaff. The eggs should be well covered with the chaff as well, you might have to press it on a bit. Put the eggs on a plate and leave them for a day in a cool place to make the mud harden. Bury the eggs in the pot with the soil and gardening lime. Poor any remaining tea over the soil. Leave the eggs in the pot for three months. After three months, test one egg and compare it to the picture. Leave them in longer if necessary. Your eggs are now ready for use. They are an excellent ap-petizer, go well with noodles and tofu and in your Chinese seafood porridge. Or just eat them as a snack. And try making your own blue-mayonnaise with the yolk!

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Anaerobic egg

Author:Frans Willem Hamer

Sudoku Puzzles

Big Water Management puzzle:

Sudoku:

Solutions previous issue

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Retouradres:Dispuut WatermanagementStevinweg 1, k. 4.742628 CN, DelftThe Netherlands

The Big Water Management Puzzle

Dear Water Managers,

This big-watermangament puzzle is completely related to the Millennium Development Goals. Setting easy targets will not help you solve the problem. However, to get you going, there are some that are easy, but luckily there are difficult ones as well. Try to cooperate, since that will only improve your chances of solving the puzzle. Finishing this puzzle will make you definitely less naive.

Enjoy!

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

+a

ff=v, jes=y

u=i, -n

-co

-p-l

+me