Technical Bulletin No. 0151: The Future Prospect in Pollution Abatement

“It should be recalled, as has been so often recalled to most people in the industry, that water is the major raw material of all of the industries in the United States. This reality is often forgotten; first, because water may be universal; secondly, because it is often easily accessible and, thirdly, because it seems to be an afterthought in connection with some plant locations, designs and considerations in operation. It is, however, the most important raw material with which one deals. Its great merit, of course, is that it is repetitively used. It is not an exhausted or exhaustible material. It has a great many advantages over oil, minerals and the like, in that it can be, if intelligently conserved, used, reused and applied for multiple purposes. The water resources’ setting, as we seem to know it now, has significance for our discussion”. -  Professor Abel Wolman, Johns Hopkins University, 1962