J. Water Resource and Protection, 2010, 2, 995-996
doi:10.4236/jwarp.2010.212119 Published Online December 2010 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jwarp)
995
Book Recommendation: Advances in Water Quality Control
Gail Krantzberg, Aysegul Tanik et al.
Scientific Research Publishing, 2010
316 pages
ISBN: 978-1-935068-08-2
Paperback (US$89.00) E-book (US$89.00)
Order online: www.scirp.org/book
Order by email:
1. Background
Water is for sure the only common and global issue that
interests all the living bodies of the world including hu-
mans, flora and fauna. Without water, survival is not pos-
sible. It is among the main natural resources that recog-
nizes no borders. The two components of water are
namely quality and quantity . World water resources are
estimated to be 1400 million km3; however, only a minor
portion of this potential amount is usable water. As the
amount of usable/accessible water differs from country to
country, place to place, season to season, water shortage
is experienced in some countries. It is well known that
water resources are not equally distributed according to
population densities among the countries. Some countries
have abundant water resources, whereas some others suf-
fer from inadequate water, and even face severe water
scarcity problems. Currently, a portion of accessible
global water resources are polluted especially through
human-induced activities, and can no longer be used. An-
other portion of water is lost during transmission due to
lack of efficient and proper infrastructure. Thus, pollution
of water resources leads to serious sanitary problems.
1/5th of the world’s population that accounts to approxi-
mately 1.1 billion people is under the risk of water-related
diseases, and moreover each year many people die as they
do not have safe drinking water. The main reason of this
fact is lack of adequate infrastructure rather than water
scarcity. For that reason, one of the Millennium Devel-
opment Goals, announced at the United Nations General
Council in year 2000, is to decrease the number of people
that suffer from clean water access by 50% by year 2015.
The sectoral distribution of water consumption as a
global average is dominated by agricultural and green
land irrigation with an overall value of 70%, followed b y
industrial uses with 22%, and 8% is shared by domestic
uses as referred in the UN World Water Development
Report of year 2003. It is for sure that our limited natural
water resources are highly used in agricultural activities,
and industrial development and population rise in paral-
lel increase the demand for water to be used in these
sectors. Thus, we are trying to increase the quantity of
accessible clean and secure water. On the other hand, the
wastewater arising from the use of water is an even more
significant problem when they are discharged into re-
ceiving water bodies. To cope with this problem and
protect the well-being of our environment, various types
of wastewater treatment systems; primary, secondary,
tertiary have to be installed for the point sources of pol-
lutants. Technological advances make it possible to im-
plement different types of wastewater systems to mini-
mize their polluting effects and moreover, the most re-
cent reuse technologies enable to establish advanced
systems for reusing wastewater. On one hand, humans
pollute their environment through their activities and on
the other hand, they work hard and spent time and money
in installing wastewater treatment plants to protect their
environment. The efforts of the humans in keeping their
water resources clean usually become insufficient espe-
cially in developing and under-developed countries.
Among the reasons, one can address the high investment
and operational costs of wastewater treatment plants, the
institutional and legal constraints faced in the countries,
lack of receiving water and discharge standards, and lack
of monitoring and control of the already established
plants.
2. Aims and Readers
In short, maintaining the required quality of water ac-
cording to the intended use has now become one of the
important issues to be tackled with. This book on Ad-
vances in Water Quality Control emerged at this point.
There are various books written worldwide on water
quality; however, this book aims to put forth and focus
on the recent advances of water quality control. A group
of international experts have come together to write this
book who target to pass recent available knowledge and
information to the readers. The readers and beneficiaries
varies from academicians, professional engineers and
scientists, to undergraduate and graduate engineering

996 G. KRANTZBERG ET AL.
students from all nations no matter where they come
from; either a developed and a developing country.
3. Introduction of Chapters
Keeping in mind the philosophy of “utilization and pro-
tection balance”, Chapter 1 refers to water quality re-
quirements emphasizing on the factors that affect water
quality. The water quality parameters that need to be
considered for various common beneficial uses of water
worldwide are mentioned, and the autho rs fo cus ed o n th e
water quality criteria, guidelines and standards in use. As
is known, standards need to be set by nations based on
their intended use of water by taking into account the
socio-economical status and political situation. Reuse of
water in various sectors has nowadays become an im-
portant topic in the field of water use, as this natural re-
source is becoming more limited. Chapter 2 is on using
the treated wastewater in different sectors; mainly in
agricultural activities. As referred previously, the share
of water dominates in the agricultural sector and we have
to find an alternative water resource to reduce the irriga-
tion water demand with clean water. The advances in
reuse technologies have made wastewater treatment
available for irrigation. Therefore, this chapter, after in-
troducing the various types of reuses reviews the ad-
vanced technologies used in implementing and upgrad-
ing agricultural reuse systems. The recent experiences of
various countries are mentioned. The management of
wastewater as a new resource of water is also referred to
enlighten the readers on the important items of reusing
treated water. Selection of the most effective and proper
wastewater treatment is actually the essential part of ge-
nerating a new water resource as well as protecting the
discharge environments. Thus, the fundamental princi-
ples of wastewater treatment are focused in Chapter 3.
This chapter covers all the acceptable and universally
applied wastewater treatment processes and systems.
Another aspect is using wastewater in aquaculture. The
historical background using wastewater in aquaculture,
probable impacts and technical aspects of fish culture is
explained in depth in Chapter 4. Beyond presenting the
wastewater treatment technologies and reuse of waste-
water in various sectors, one gets interested with the use
and application of economic instruments, selection be-
tween different instruments to cope with the problem of
water pollution. This topic is covered in detail in Ch apter
5. Moreover, financing and sustaining wastewater man-
agement is another issue that needs to be highlighted.
Chapter 6 is devoted to this topic of management where
“sustainability” is emphasized as the common key word
of technical, legislative and supportive aspects of waste-
water management.
Within the past few decades, the advances in computer
science made available the use of modern information
technologies that makes our lives easier. Chapter 7 is
spared to the information systems used nowadays in wa-
ter quality control. Emphasis is given to the implementa-
tion of water quality networks and to water quality mon-
itoring technology. After presenting all the important
points of water quality control, now we have to establish
a framework for water pollution control. This is covered
in Chapter 8 where it is referred that identification and
determination of polluting sources need to be done on
watershed basis. Watershed based studies require the use
of certain modern management tools and instruments.
The selection and application of an appropriate manage-
ment plan for water pollution control and management
alternatives form the basis of this chapter. There are var-
ious conventional and modern tools and techniques used
in water quality interpretation. They are explained in
Chapter 9 in detail including a case study on application
of salient techniques to groundwater qua lity assessment.
Chapter 10 is on a case study conducted in Canada on
revitalization plans and implementation aiming estab-
lishment of a successful clean-up strategy. The lessons
learnt from the application are also stated. Chapter 11 is
again on a case study of a pollution control strategy im-
plemented for determining the characteristics of Polya-
luminum Chloride (PAC) that is used as coagulant pre-
pared by baking process. Chapter 12 concludes the book
with a look at low-cost wastewater treatment processes.
Along with the conventional wastewater treatment proc-
esses, the natural biological treatment systems are over-
viewed in this chapter in detail. This book is designed in
a way to overview the recent advances in water quality
control and I hope it will serve to advance the field of
water quality control and improve the control actio ns and
strategies to be applied by the nations of the world.
Aysegul Tanik
Istanbul, Turkey