8:39 a.m., July 12, 2010----The University of Delaware will host the 6th annual International Conference on Sustainable Water Environment from July 29-31 at Clayton Hall on the UD campus in Newark.

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The conference was started in Asia six years ago with previous sessions held in Taipei, Hokkaido, Japan, Singapore, and Seoul, Korea. This is the first time the conference has been held in North America.

The conference is designed to provide a forum for the exchange of information on topics related to water among academicians, engineers and public policy makers. This year's conference will focus on strategy and technology needs for sustainable water in a time of climate change.

Paul L. Bishop, director of the National Science Foundation environmental engineering program, will present a keynote address on “Water Sustainability: The Need for Enabling Research” and Charles I. Noss and Audrey Levin of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will discuss “Safe and Sustainable Water.” Noss is the EPA national program director for water quality and Levin is national program director for drinking water.

The addresses will be presented at 9:30 a.m., Thursday, July 29, in the Clayton Hall auditorium.

Technical sessions follow through the course of the two and one-half day conference and the topics will include impacts of climate change on the water environment and responses, emerging contaminants, integrated watershed management, water conservation and reuse, and water infrastructures.

About 200 delegates are expected to attend the conference from the U.S., China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, United Kingdom, Germany, Span, Brazil, Ghana, Malaysia, Pakistan and Japan.

The conference is funded by National Science Foundation and the EPA, with additional financial support provided by UD's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Delaware Environmental Institute, the Institute for Global Studies and the College of Engineering.

Additional sponsors include the Environmental and Water Resources Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (EWRI-ASCE), the Division of Water Resources of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environment Control (DNREC) and the Chinese American Professors in Environmental Engineering and Science (CAPEES).

The conference is being directed by C.P. Huang, Donald C. Phillips Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UD, together with an international organizing committee. Members of the committee include P. C. Chiang of National Taiwan University, Suing Il Choi of Korea University, Richard Field of the EPA, Say leong Ong of the National University of Singapore, Michael Ports of the Environmental and Water Resources Institute-ASCE, Rao Surampalli of the EPA, Anthony Tafuri of the EPA, Yoshimasa Watanabe of Hokkaido University and Shaw L. Yu of the University of Virginia.

Local committee members include Pei Chiu, Dan Cha, Steve Dentel and Nii Attoh-Okine from UD's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Youngdoo Wang of the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, Holly Michael of the Department of Geological Sciences, and Gerald J. Kauffman, director of the Water Resources Agency, a unit of the Institute for Public Administration. Dana Crumety serves as the conference secretariat.

For details, see the International Conference on Sustainable Water Environment website.