Research needs for developing innovative water and wastewater treatment technologies

Research aimed at solving important environmental problems at all scales ranging from global to individual will continue to be an essential part of the process by which sustainability of life on earth may be achieved. Solutions to environmental problems that relate to water are especially critical to this process and are likely to involve use of innovative technologies that emerge from research with sufficient promise to justify their development, a process that evaluates them at a scale that will yield engineering design parameters and confidence in their technical performance and economic value. Privatization of water and wastewater systems and mergers of equipment manufacturers may provide the economic bases needed for development of innovative water and wastewater treatment technologies in the 21st Century that have emerged from research in the 19th and 20th Centuries but have not as yet been fully developed or adopted.