Environmental Technologies and Eco-innovation in the Czech ...

6 | Sustainable Water Management
Water management is a set of activities that includes water utilisation, protection and
economy. Water is a basic component of the environment. Therefore, sustainable
water management is one of the most important principles of nature and landscape
protection. The sustainable utilisation of water sources and the water economy is
necessary for more than just the drinking water supply. A lack of water in general,
and especially a lack of drinking water is a serious problem both in a European and
a global context. In this respect, the Czech Republic has an exceptional position both
in Europe and in the world. The country’s geographical location, geological structure
and topography guarantee it will have sufficient sources of high-quality water.
Today, 92.3% of the inhabitants are supplied with drinking water and 83.4% of the
inhabitants are connected to a sewer network in the Czech Republic. Many inhabitants
of municipalities with less than 2 000 inhabitants are not connected to a sewer network.
Their connection to a sewer system and subsequent waste water treatment has been too
expensive so far. However, this is now being rectified or already has been rectified.
It is necessary to protect the water sources from the negative consequences of
human activity. Today, protection of water bodies against the effects connected with
current climatic changes is also playing an important role. It is necessary to manage
water even better and to ensure the application of the state-of-the-art technologies
in water management.
The objective of sustainable water management is to ensure safe drinking water
and total treatment of waste water from all towns, municipalities and diffuse sources
where the waste water discharge threatens the state of the environment.
6.1 | Modern water treatment methods
The production of drinking water and water intended for food production is an
important group of technologies in the water management area. It is based on having
high-quality raw material. This equates to having high-quality groundwater or surface
water (either from large rivers, lakes or reservoirs), which is gradually cleared of
impurities by coarse screens and through sedimentation. Subsequently it is cleared
of dissolved and very fine undissolved pollutants through chemical precipitation