Dear SuSanA Working Group Members

I am pleased to accept the invitation to become Working Group Lead for the SuSanA Working Group on Groundwater Protection (WG11), a task I share with Leif Wolf from KIT, Germany, as you can see here.

My background
I am a chemical engineer and civil engineer by training, but have focused on the challenges of understanding and managing groundwater for now more than 25 years. Currently, I am a Principal Researcher at IWMI, International Water Management Institute, where I lead the groundwater research group. I also coordinate the Groundwater Solutions Initiative for Policy and Practice (GRIPP), a global partnership of about 30 international organizations collaborating to enhance the sustainable use and management of groundwater.

Groundwater is under increasing stress, from various threats related to both quantity and quality. Improper sanitation is a major factor influencing groundwater around the world. There are appropriate ways to deal with this, though often these are not taken into account as communities grow into towns and towns grow into cities. With SuSanA and others, I am getting more involved in the sanitation issues and linkages to groundwater, and exploring how we can improve the situation.

I am happy to be co-leading this group, and I look forward to interacting with you. Leif and I will be back later this year as we update the Factsheet for the Working Group. We also hope to work on concrete solutions in collaboration with other working groups, with GRIPP and other interested parties. Feel free to enter into the discussion online and bring forward comments, input and suggestions at any time. I am looking forward to a fruitful discussion and collaboration with the working group and the wider SuSanA.



Best regards,
Karen
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Dr Karen Villholth
Principal Researcher
IWMI, International Water Management Institute
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Dear SuSanA working group members,

I am pleased to accept the invitation to provide support to Andrea in managing this group an I am looking forward to working with you in the future.

Two reasons specifically attracted me to this role:

1) The very useful factsheet which was jointly developed by the group. I really like it, since it conveys much more information than most factsheets which merely state some very general information about funding sources, project duration and partner institutions. Well done, Andrea for leading this initiative and congratulations again to the group.
2) According to my experience, groundwater protection is often not happening because of the superstition that it is complex and too costly and that the positive impact will be both hard to notice and difficult to measure. Groundwater protection often conflicts with pre-existing developments and sometimes requires decisions concerning economic tradeoffs.
I would love to explore with this expert group how we can draft up further advice on the delineation of groundwater protection zones in urban areas considering practical limitations and cultural acceptance and economic tradeoffs.
Some best practice examples which provided proven benefits to local populations might be useful here. Also i am interested to think about how to simplify some of the newer knowledge from quantitative microbiological risk assessment for practical application.

My background:
I am a hydrogeologist by education but was increasingly drawn into integrated water resources management in the past. My PhD work dealt with the impact of leaking sewers on groundwater quality (digbib.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/volltexte/1000005430), then i was involved in an EU project which found a surprisingly high resilience and robustness of urban groundwater systems. www.iwapublishing.com/template.cfm?name=isbn1843391384
Currently i am work package leader for water resources protection in the SMART-IWRM project at the Lower Jordan River and i will try to get some additional experts involved in the discussions. In Australia, i am running a project on the use of water from indirect potable reuse schemes (i.e. wastewater turned to drinking water) in peri-urban agriculture. Some of my colleagues at CSIRO (e.g. Peter Dillon, Simon Toze, Declan Page) have more experience than myself in regard to Managed Aquifer Recharge and the associated risk assessments. I am happy to facilitate access to those people where appropriate.


All the best,
Leif

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Dr Leif Wolf
Principal Research Scientist
CSIRO Land & Water
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Dear all,

I'm very pleased to announce that Dr. Leif Wolf has accepted our proposal to become the new co-lead of working group 11. We will be working together to define new outcomes and we'll ask for your contributions.

Leif will introduce himself in the coming days in this Forum.

All the best,
Andrea