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-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Of all the clean water that our cities consume, roughly half of it flows down our sewers to sewage treatment plants where it is treated and released back to the environment. Conventional sewage treatment plants are designed to clean this water to a degree that can be discharged to rivers or the ocean without major environmental or public health impacts. In many parts of the world, sufficient fresh water supplies are increasingly difficult to source. Water stressed cities now import water, pumped over large distances at a considerable energy cost. Los Angeles, for example, imports 8.9bn litres of water a day to meet the city’s needs. Other cities, such as Ashkelon in Israel, are investing in seawater desalination to produce drinkable water. But this process is also highly energy intensive and its application limited to coastal locations. An alternative opportunity is...

-- a note from _kt75  The Sahelian zone is subject to a significant drought. Missing rainfalls [ 1 ], local and regional conflicts as well as inefficient farming methods number among the key reasons [ 2 ]-[ 4 ]. Actually a fertile grassland located among the dessert in the North and the rain forest in the South, the Sahelian region is highly dependent upon sufficient rain fall [ 5 ], [ 1 ]. However, since the late 1960ies a notable decline in rainfall intensity has been recorded [ 1 ] and thus access to surface water is more and more limited [ 5 ]-[ 7 ]. As pivotal aspect for this development the global warming (climate change) has been detected. In order to tackle and overcome this critical situation in the past years a number of efforts, in particular of technical nature have been launched. One example is the successful installation of solar power operated ground water wells which are well-suited to facilitate decentralised water supply [ 8 ]. The use of ground water in the Sahel...