Desalination the Environment, Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, 9-12 November, 1999
Our conference at Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain was a great success. The theme was "Desalination and the Environment", the same as of our 1996 meeting at Genoa. The conference was held jointly with the International Water Association, continuing our co-operation with IWA from the 1998 Amsterdam Conference, and coincided with the CANAGUA 99 water supply exhibition.
The opening reception on 9 November was held in the foyer of the Reina Isabel hotel in Las Palmas. This was hosted by Mott MacDonald to mark my retirement from full time work, after more than 30 years with the company and their predecessors and my final event as the EDS President.
At the conference opening on 10 November I welcomed representatives from the organizations associated with the conference and our activities. Mike Slipper, deputy director of IWA, Bill Andrews, vice president of IDA, and Ali Redha Hussain, secretary of WSTA each spoke on behalf of their organizations. I thanked Sr. Rafael Pedrero, secretary of CANAGUA for their co-operation and generous provision of the halls and conference facilities. Keynote speeches by Fatima Al Awadi (Kuwait), T. Hoepner (Germany) and F. Rillaerts (Belgium) followed the opening on various environmental and regulatory aspects of desalination. We were then invited to attend the official opening of the CANAGUA exhibition
In this Newsletter Emy Delyannis describes the conference technical sessions, on 10 and 11 November. At the technical sessions we had a wide range of very interesting oral and poster presentations, and most papers generated lively discussion. I would like to thank the program committee, Bill Hanbury chairman, and the session chairmen for their hard work in organizing and running the parallel sessions to a tight timetable. 
Before the conference started, we had expected about 220 delegates. The registration desk was kept busy as the attendance swelled to over 300, including representatives from The Middle East and North Africa, as well as many people from Spain and the Canary Islands. Miriam and her staff in LíAquila and José Veza and his helpers from Las Palmas University were kept busy finding hotels for so many extras, helped by one (anonymous) delegate who found he had booked a room on another island - Lanzarote!
On the final day we visited two very different desalination plants. At Jinamar two 17500 m3/ day MED units are nearing completion. These are low temperature horizontal tube units, with 14 effects and aluminum tubes, giving 11:1 performance ratio. These plants are being built to replace MSF units dating from 1968, with additional capacity.
At Maspalomas, in the south of the island, we visited a 10000 m3/day seawater RO plant, built and operated by Ionics to supply water to large hotels. One stream has been fitted with Toray brine concentrators membranes early this year. Results presented at the conference showed a 50% increase in production, with no change in feed flow or preótreatment. Results over the first 6 months were sufficiently encouraging to fit brine concentrator membranes to the other two streams, and these are now being commissioned. After the site visits we enjoyed an excellent lunch as guests of Ionics.
The conference dinner, hosted by Dow Separations, was held in the splendid old Literary Society hall. EDS made a presentation to Brian Todd, and Trevor Hodgkiess spoke about Brianís long career in material and corrosion aspects of desalination. We wish Brian and Margaret a long and happy retirement.
Finally I would like to thank the many people who worked so hard to run this event: José Veza and his local committee for the organization of the transport, visits and coordination, with CANAGUA, Miriam Balaban, together with Alessia, Ortensia and Galina for all their work on the proceedings, publicity and organization, and our sponsors for their generous support of the conference and social events. 

Neil Wade, EDS President

In general the conference was very successful and presented new technological improvements in desalination methods for purification of liquids and waste water.
Proceedings of three volumes were distributed at the conference and appeared in the Desalination Journal Vols. 124, 125 and 126 convenient for following conference papers. A CD Rom is also available for home use.
Parallel to the sessions an Exhibition took 
place: the "CANAGUA INFECAR 99". As the Canary Islands depend about 80% on desalinated water, many Spanish companies exhibited their desalination installations in the Spanish territory and abroad. The exhibitors presented desalination and water treatment plants for brackish and seawater.
At the end of the Conference visits took place to desalination plants, on Friday to the Gran Canaria plants hosted by Ionics and on Saturday to the Lanzarote desalination plants hosted by CatPumps.
In Gran Canaria, the visit was in the Las Palmas, Telde old desalination plant which is now expanding with the new 2x17 500 m3/d multiple-effect distillation plant, under construction.
A visit was paid also to the Ionics-Iberica, S.A., in Maspalomas, a new RO seawater desalination plant. A whole day was also dedicated to the Lanzarote Island RO and distillation plants. Unfortunately we missed a visit to the wind energy park in Las Palmas.
The conference was sponsored by the University of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, the Science and Technology Park of Abruzzo Italy, the Middle East Desalination Research Center, the Compagnie Générale des Eaux France, Lyonnaise des Eaux France, the WW Rhenish-Westphalien Institute for Water Research Germany, The International Institute for Infrastructural, Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering the Kiwa N.V. Research and Consultancy Holland and Mott MacDonald, UK.
Dr. Emy Delyannis
National Center for Scientific Research "Demokritos" Athens Greece

Las Palmas Program Committee: 
Miriam Balaban, Klaus Genthner, Bengt Hallmans 
Bill Hanbury, Jan Schippers, Corrado Sommariva, José Veza and Neil Wade