Water, Sewage & Effluent Mar Vol 30 No 2 | Page 42

"This is because
water is
everybody’s
business."

services of large cities and instead are
concentrating on providing specialised
services such as the treatment works
Veolia is running in Durban for the
Mondi factory.
Muller argues against the widely held
notion that implementation is the “only”
problem for the water sector. “Clearly
there is something wrong if for the past
20 years we’ve known what needs to be
done but it isn’t happening. We need
to distinguish between what we need
to do technically and what we need to
do economically and politically. The
technicians are often very good at dealing
the technical part of the job, but they
sometimes don’t understand how to
deal with the finances, the politics and

the organisations, which are by far the
hardest part of the water business. This is
because water is everybody’s business.”

Globetrotting
Muller is also an explorer. Just last year
he jetted to North Carolina to talk about
water and health. The next stop was
Geneva to present a paper on water and
trade. In Beijing, he took to the podium
to discuss water and hydropower. He also
worked on the issue of water and regional
integration with the African Development
Bank in Tunis, and took a trip to Brussels
to discuss the future of farming. “Water
takes me into everyone else’s business.
The challenge then is to bring their issues
back into the water sector,” he says.

Ad Index
APE Pumps
18
Bearing Man Group
30
Burkett
40
Subscription request 
5
GEA  32
Interact Media Defined 
14
KSB 
  IBC
Mather and Platt SA
38

Specialised exhibitions
Precision Meters
Rainbow Reservoirs  
Rockwell Automation 
Terrapinn                                                           
World Plumbing Conference                      
Zoeller                                                                

34
9
4
IFC
35
2
  OBC