Water Engineering and Management Through Time – Learning from History

WATER ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT THROUGH TIME – LEARNING FROM HISTORY © 2010 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC Water Engineering and Management through Time – Learning from History Editors Enrique Cabrera & Francisco Arregui ITA, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain © 2010 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC CRC Press/Balkema is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, London, UK Typeset by MPS Ltd. (A Macmillan Company), Chennai, India Printed and bound in UK by Antony Rowe (a CPI group company), Chippenham, Wiltshire All rights reserved. No part of this publication or the information contained herein may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written prior permission from the publisher. Although all care is taken to ensure integrity and the quality of this publication and the information herein, no responsibility is assumed by the publishers nor the author for any damage to the property or persons as a result of operation or use of this publication and/or the information contained herein. Published by: CRC Press/Balkema P.O. Box 447, 2300 AK Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] www.crcpress.com – www.taylorandfrancis.co.uk – www.balkema.nl ISBN: 978-0-415-48002-4 (Hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-83673-6 (eBook) © 2010 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC Table of Contents Foreword VII Fernando Moreno García Preface IX Enrique Cabrera & Francisco Arregui Part A – Introduction 1. Engineering and water management over time. Learning from history 3 Enrique Cabrera & Francisco Arregui Part B – Water engineering and management through time 2. Water engineering and management in the early Bronze Age civilizations 29 Pierre-Louis Viollet 3. Water engineering and management in Ancient Egypt 55 Larry W. Mays 4. Water engineering and management in the classic civilizations 77 Henning Fahlbusch 5. Water engineering and management in al-Andalus 117 José Roldán & Maria Fátima Moreno 6. Hydraulic advances in the 19th and 20th centuries: From Navier over Prandtl into the future 131 Willi H. Hager Part C – The great challenges of water in the 21st century 7. Water, history and sustainability, a complex trinomial hard to harmonise in Mediterranean countries 171 Concepción Bru & Enrique Cabrera 8. Water and agriculture. Current situation and future trends 199 Martín Sevilla Jiménez 9. Water and the city in the 21st century. A panoramic vision 227 Steve Buchberger & Enrique Cabrera 10. European water research: From past to future trends 245 Avelino González 11. The interdisciplinary challenge in water policy: The case of “water governance” 259 J.E. Castro V © 2010 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC VI Table of Contents 12. The future of water management: The case for long-range hydraulic interconnections 277 M. Fanelli 13. Water resources in developing countries: The millennium development goals in the 21st century 291 C. Fernández-Jauregui 14. Water challenges in the 21st century 303 Philip H. Burgi Part D – Conclusions 15. Conclusions 337 Enrique Hernández Moreno Author index 341 © 2010 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC Foreword Historically nobody has doubt about the importance of water as a fundamental resource, necessary for the human being but also for the proper economic and social development of cultures and civilizations. But it is in the last years where the public awareness about water has gained bigger importance. The increasing needs of water for human supply and agricultural use, together with a less availability of the resources has make the water be a permanent matter of attention, and its management, an authentic challenge for the companies involved in that task, to whom they arise constant needs of providing innovative and sustainable solutions of the management pattern of water’s integral cycle. Therefore it has a huge value to look back and observe what our predecessors has done in this hard and noble task of putting the water at the citizens disposition, which difficulties have they had and how they find the solutions in order to learn the lessons that water management history through the pass of time has left us, to try to face with the biggest success the future challenge of the management of a limited and essential resource like water. The book that you have in your hands just exactly deals about this and it is a great pleasure for aqualia to collaborate in this line with the university world, trying once more to combine the academic knowledge and the daily practice, hence to be more useful to the whole society. With actions like this we will try to approach to all the people and show them that behind water’s enjoyment in quality and quantity there is a very complex process that has to be managed by qualified and skilled professionals, experts in all the phases of water’s integral cycle. With our participation in publications like this we will like to contribute a little bit more in the popularization and knowledge of this sector. Therefore I invite you to use the information contained in every chapter of the book and enjoy the reading, learn and thought it over. Fernando Moreno García General Manager of aqualia Gestión Integral del Agua VII © 2010 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC Preface The challenges water policy has to face this 21st century are enormous. Among others, it is worth to mention in first place the need to guarantee access to drinking water and to a decent hygiene level for all the inhabitants of a planet that has almost tripled its population in the last six decades. The second issue to be mentioned is a growing contamination that must be dramatically reduced. In tune with the growth of mankind, during last decade pollution has increased at an unsustainable pace. Last, water policy must ensure to cover, with scarcer resources, not only the human, industrial and agricultural needs, but those required by the ecosystems as well. It is worth to underline that in the last few decades have supported a deep deterioration. This is a rather complex task because in some decades, climate change threatens will reduce available water resources in dry areas a very significant amount (up to 40%). This book focuses on these and other issues of to the future’s water policy. Nothing new under the sun, since rivers of ink have been spent, are spend and will be spent trying to identify not only the actions that are convenient to ensure a more sustainable future than the present is, but also the great difficulties to overcome to put these actions in practice. The novelty lies, we believe, in the approach to perform the analysis. It is inspired in the great historian Edward Gibbon who, while walking around Rome’s ruins, wondered how such an impressive culture had fallen so low. The answer can be found in his famous book, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. To some extent, the Mediterranean’ water culture has lived a similar history. In fact, water engineering history has written its most glorious pages in many countries in which actually water is poorly managed. In most of them, current water policies are simply unsustainable. And history repeats itself. Brilliant solutions of the past – though in another context – claim for an adaptation to present day. And this is not an easy task. In his conclusions Gibbon states that what does not evolve, is decadent. After all, it is the immobilism what encumbers policies valid until some few decades ago, now unsustainable. If the present work contributes to unblock what is now blocked, mainly in countries lying on the Mediterranean’ shores, the effort put on a book of complex genesis will be worth. Its root, papers presented at an international seminar which was held under the same name at the University of Alicante (Spain) in mid-2006. But, because the final objective of this publication was to become a book rather than the proceedings of a meeting, a later analysis of their contents evidenced some weakness to overcome. This is the reason why this publication includes five contributions not scheduled initially. By the other hand, most of papers presented at the seminar have been updated by the authors. The result is a book of fifteen chapters organised in four sections. The introduction includes just a chapter that provides the general framework. The second section, Water across time, gather five lessons corresponding to periods in which Water Engineering has written some of its most brilliant pages. The third section, under the title Great challenges of water in the 21st century, is integrated by seven chapters that review some of the more relevant problems of present-day water policy. Last, a shortest section includes some conclusions and summarises the contents of the preceding chapters. Arrived to this point of this prologue, must be recognised the obvious. There are many periods of this history and many relevant cultures that are not described in the book and, for sure, some actual serious concerns are not discussed. The reason is evident. A wider analysis would require much more time, making unfeasible this work. In fact, Gibbon devoted nearly twenty years of his life to his book. Nevertheless the contents as it is should be enough to achieve the aim we initially set to ourselves, to identify the way of the future. And for such purpose it is necessary to gain some historical perspective otherwise, we will not be able to see wood for the trees. IX © 2010 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC X Preface This book presents a singular water engineering history. Singular because it has mostly been written by engineers, with the inevitable advantages and disadvantages involved.

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