Water & Wastewater International杂志最近公布了Top 25 Leaders Listing评选结果，IWA前主席Glen Daigge教授和IWA专家组成员Mark van Loosdrecht教授分别位列榜单的第一名和第二名。记者专门对荣获Top 25 Leaders Listing评选第一名的Glen Daigger教授进行了专访。
40 Years Not Out
Votes have been counted and the final results are in. The winner of this year’s WWi Top 25 Leaders Listing is the immediate past president of IWA and former chief technology officer at CH2M, Glen Daigger. With four decades of experience in the global sector, he has witnessed a shift in how water is treated and respected. Here he shares highlights from his career and thoughts on leadership.
Water & Wastewater International magazine (WWi): Firstly, congratulations on winning this year’s WWi Top 25 Leaders listing! Am I correct in saying you’ve been involved in the global water industry for 40 years?
Glen Daigger (Glen): Yes sir. I enjoy working with young water professionals. The definition of a young water professional is under the age of 35. So I’ve been working in this profession longer than these folks have been alive!
WWi: Ha! That really gives some perspective. Four decades is a long time but what would you say has been your career highlight, if you can pinpoint just one?
Glen: Well the direct answer to that is no. Since you insist, one of the really great highlights was the time as the president o f the International Water Association (IWA). It really provided an opportunity to interact with such a wide range of folks and learn so much. One of the great things about the water profession is you can learn something every day. It’s a great place for intellectually curious people.
WWi: We often see technologies that spring up and are called “innovative” or “disruptive”. Which technologies have come up over your 40 year career that have really made a difference?
Glen: I can think about three that have really stood the test of time and have really been transformational. The first one that comes to mind is biological nutrient removal, both nitrogen and phosphorus.
Over 40 years, it’s a time when biological nutrient technologies were first observed and first began to be implemented in full scale systems and have become the norm. Secondly area suite of technologies that allow us to take essentially water of any quality and turn it into potable water or even better. That’s something that’s transformational.
On the solids side over my career, a technology that was disfavoured but has come back is anaerobic digestion. It used to be the core - when you go back several decades- of solids processing but fell out of favour. Now it’s become the core of solids processing, bioenergy production and resource recovery from the used water stream.
WWi: So you’ve witnessed a shift from a disposal culture to a resource reclamation culture when it comes to wastewater processing?
Glen: Absolutely. We have the technology to do so much; more than we actually accomplish today and that creates tremendous opportunities. Again we need to be looking not only at what we can do but where we should be doing it and how we should be doing it. We need to be bolder in terms of what we can actually do and how we can contribute to society on a broader basis.
WWi: You’re known for talking about the new paradigm in urban water treatment. What does this mean and how have you influenced this over your career?
Glen: The paradigm is this: first of all, water demand is increasing, both because of population and economic growth. The projections are that by 2050 the demand is going to increase by 50% but essentially all of our existing resources are being utilised. The only way we’re going to meet this demand is through increased efficiency: through better rainwater capture, reuse and then selectively through desalination. What this means is from a water management perspective we need to integrate and look at water as one water and look at being more efficient and using water multiple times.
The second componentis that, compared to the past, we are moving to a resource constrained planet, and there are resources in the urban water cycle. Historically, we’ve looked at being capital efficient in terms of water management. The objective function now is resource efficiency: how we minimise the net amount of energy that we use, how we can extract nutrients and so forth.
My advice to folks would be don’t be constrained only by what we can do today. We’re pretty smart: if we can see what needs to be done and we can see that there’s fundamental science that will allow it, then we can figure out how to do it. We need that future thinking. If we’re not thinking ahead we’re getting behind as we manage water.
WWi: The WWi Top 25 series celebrates leadership and the best of the best from around the world. What do you think it takes to be a successful leader in the global water industry?
Glen: It starts with vision: a vision of how the world can be a better place and how things can be changed to meet that better future. It needs to be matched up with pragmatic steps and then to start moving in that direction. I tell people that a water person has to live in the “virtual reality” of the imagination. We need to be imagining the future because the things we are doing today are shaping the future.
One person cannot do this by themselves. It’s about enlisting others and helping them to see what they can do each and every day to move towards that vision. And finally persistence: never give up. We’re never done in water - the challenges of 2050 will be there just as the challenges of 2015 are here today.
WWi: And finally, is it finally time to leave the world of wastewater behind and fully retire? Being such an active individual I’m sure you’re not the type to sit back and retire quietly on a golf course all day. So how will you be continuing your role inthe industry?
Glen: As I tell people: retirement is someone else’s word, not my word. My perspective is that I’ve moved on to the next phase of my career. This summer I joined the University of Michigan as Professor of Engineering Practice; a role which fits me to a T. I describe it as bringing more of the outside world into the university and also helping to bring the university more into the outside world.
I developed One Water Solutions to continue to work alongside my role in the University. I look to continue for at least for the next 15 to 20 years to basically continue doing the things I’ve been doing throughout my career.
WWi: And then in 10 years we can talk about your 50 years in the water industry? Not many others can make that claim!
Glen: [Laughs] I’ve certainly been a lucky person, one that, when you come to work, it’s what you would have done anyway. That’s been my experience throughout my career and it continues to be. I enjoy every day that I’ve put into this profession and Iintend to continue that for the foreseeable future.
WWi: Glen - we wish you the best of luck continuing to inspire leaders of the future. Again congratulations on taking the top spot in the WWi Top 25 Leader series.
1. Glen Daigger, Professor of Unversity of Michigan, President of One Water Solutions LLC, Immediate Past President of IWA , US
5. Lisa Henthorne, Past President, International Desalination Association (IDA), US
6. Kazuo Yamamoto, Professor, University of Tokyo, Japan, Vice President of Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand and President, Water Reuse Promotion Centre, Japan
7. Simon Judd, Maersk Oil Professorial Chair in Environmental Engineering, Qatar University, Qatar, and Professor of Membrane Technology, Cranfield University, UK
8. Allan Lambert, Managing Director, Water Loss Research & Analysis, UK
9. Peter Gleick, President and Co-founder, Pacific Institute, US
10. James Barnard, Global Practice and Technology Leader, Black & Veatch, South Africa
11. Tony Fane, Director, Singapore Membrane Technology Centre, Singapore
12. Booky Oren, Chairman & CEO, Booky Oren Water Technologies, Israel
13. Fraser MacLeod, Executive Director, World Water Council, France
14. Boris Lesjean, R&D Program Manager, Berlin Centre of Competence for Water, Germany
15. Andrew Benedek, CEO, Anaergia, Hungary
16. Harry Seah, Chief Technology Officer, PUB, Singapore’s national water agency
17. Amanda Brock, CEO, Water Standard, US
18. Boris Liberman, Chief Technology Officer, IDE Technologies, Israel
19. Charles P. Gerba, University of Arizona, US
20. Adil Bushnak, CEO, Bushnak Group, Saudi Arabia
21. William Muhairwe, Senior Team Leader, 2ml Consulting (Former CEO, Ugandan National Water & Sewerage Corporation - NWSC), Africa
22. Neil Macleod, Former CEO, eThekwini Municipality, South Africa
23. Dragan Savic, Professor of hydroinformatics, Exeter University, UK
24. Mamadou Dia, President of Aquafed, Head of Water and Sanitation, Eranove and Former CEO of Sénégalaise Des Eaux (SDE), Senegal
25. Alan Thomson, Managing Director, Abu Dhabi Sewerage and Services Company (ADSSC), UK
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