Water Accountability Model under Emergency Cases and for Areas Gained New Access to Water Services

We present a reference accountability model for water utilities that consists of five major components, namely organization, systems, data, communication, and quality management. The model has been discussed with water officials, experts, and stakeholders in order to build and customize the model for each utility through a pre-prepared questionnaire and focused groups. Results have shown that water utilities have different accountability systems with several drawbacks. There was a need for actions taken to secure regular customers’ data updates as well as activate e-services in order to access vital information during emergencies. It was therefore our strong recommendation to the water utilities to move forward with some measures to support and sustain their bi-directional communication with customers. Further recommendations encouraging water utilities to enhance the accountability mechanism such as the deployment of e- services complaints management and tracking, expanding the Enterprise Resources Planning system, improving staff communication skills, training staff on the procedures used in analyzing customers’ feedback, and moving to performance- based management system

Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Reservoirs in the Lower Jordan Watershed.

We have analyzed monthly hydrological, meteorological and water quality data from three irrigation and drinking water reservoirs in the lower Jordan River basin and estimated the atmospheric emission rates of CO2. The data were collected between 2006 and 2013 and show that the reservoirs, which differ in size and age, were net sources of CO2. The estimated surface fluxes were comparable in magnitude to those reported for hydroelectric reservoirs in the tropical and sub-tropical zones. Highest emission rates were observed for a newly established reservoir, which was initially filled during the sampling period. In the two older reservoirs, CO2 partial pressures and fluxes were significantly decreasing during the observation period, which could be related to simultaneously occurring temporal trends in water residence time and chemical composition of the water. The results indicate a strong influence of water and reservoir management (e.g. water consumption) on CO2 emission rates, which is affected by the increasing anthropogenic pressure on the limited water resources in the study area. The low wind speed and relatively high pH favored chemical enhancement of the CO2 gas exchange at the reservoir surfaces, which caused on average a four-fold enhancement of the fluxes. A sensitivity analysis indicates that the uncertainty of the estimated fluxes is, besides pH, mainly affected by the poorly resolved wind speed and resulting uncertainty of the chemical enhancement factor

Methane and nitrous oxide emission from different treatment units of municipal wastewater treatment plants in Southwest Germany.

We measured the atmospheric emission rates of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) in two wastewater treatment plants in Southwest Germany, which apply different treatment technologies. Dissolved gas concentrations and fluxes were measured during all processing steps as well as in the discharge receiving streams. N2O isotopocule analysis revealed that NH2OH oxidation during nitrification contributed 86-96% of the N2O production in the nitrification tank, whereas microbial denitrification was the main production pathway in the denitrification tank in a conventional activated sludge (CAS) system. During wastewater treatment using a modified Ludzack-Ettinger system (MLE) with energy recovery, N2O was predominantly produced by the NO2- reduction by nitrifier-denitrification process. For both systems, N2O emissions were low, with emission factors of 0.008% and 0.001% for the MLE and the CAS system, respectively. In the effluent-receiving streams, bacterial denitrification and nitrification contributed nearly equally to N2O production. The CH4 emission from the MLE system was estimated as 118.1 g-C d-1, which corresponds to an emission factor of 0.004%, and was three times lower than the emission from the CAS system with 0.01%

The map on the right shows the location of the three reservoirs (King Talal Dam, Al-Wihdeh Dam and Wadi Al-Arab Dam) within the lower Jordan watershed between Lake Tiberias and the Dead Sea.

<p>The morphological characteristics of the reservoirs are shown in the detailed maps on the left at different scales.</p

Time series of the monthly estimates of <i>p</i>CO₂ for (a) King Talal Dam (black), (b) Wadi Al-Arab Dam (green), and (c) Al-Wihdeh Dam (blue).

<p>The dashed lines show the mean atmospheric <i>p</i>CO₂ (396 μatm).</p

Time series of the physico-chemical parameters in three reservoirs King Talal Dam (black), Wadi Al-Arab (green) and Al-Wihdeh (blue): (a) Daily mean surface area, (b) daily mean water volume, (c) water surface temperature, (d) alkalinity, and (e) pH.

<p>Time series of the physico-chemical parameters in three reservoirs King Talal Dam (black), Wadi Al-Arab (green) and Al-Wihdeh (blue): (a) Daily mean surface area, (b) daily mean water volume, (c) water surface temperature, (d) alkalinity, and (e) pH.</p

Cross-correlation coefficients for the selected parameters: pH, alkalinity (<i>Alk</i>) in mmol l^-1, salinity (<i>S</i>) in ppt, temperature (<i>T</i>) in °C, <i>p</i>CO₂ in μatm, CO₂ flux (Flux) in mg CO₂ m^-2 d^-1, water volume (<i>V</i>) in m³, gas exchange velocity (<i>k</i>’₆₀₀) in m d^-1 and chemical enhancement factor (<i>α</i>).

<p>For each combination of parameters, the three numbers are the cross-correlation coefficients observed for King Talal (upper), Wadi Al-Arab (middle) and Al-Wihdeh (lowest) dams. The most significant correlation coefficients (<i>p</i><0.05) are marked bold, while <i>p</i><0.1 for the remaining correlations. Not significant correlations are marked as x.</p

Time series of the CO₂ flux for the three reservoirs in (a) King Talal Dam (black), (b) Wadi Al-Arab Dam (green), and (c) Al-Wihdeh Dam (blue).

<p>The y-axes is in different scale and the dashed lines were fixed at zero.</p

Chemical enhancement factor as a function of unenhanced gas exchange velocity <i>k’</i>_CO2 for three different pH values (color) and at two different temperatures (solid line: 25°C, dashed line: 7°C).

<p>The dotted line indicates a reciprocal relationship between both parameters and therewith a resulting exchange coefficient, which is independent of wind speed. Chemical enhancement further depends on salinity, which was fixed at a value of 0.8 ppt.</p

Summary of the measured and estimated physico-chemical variables and CO₂ fluxes for the three reservoirs.

<p><i>n</i> indicates the number of available water chemistry samples. All numbers are given as mean±SD. The arrows in parentheses indicate significant linear temporal trends (↑ increasing, ↓ decreasing,—not significant for <i>p</i><0.05).</p