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OUTLOOK
Straight on through: The shortest distance between two points is a straight line - whether underground or above. But tunnel engineers, who have to deal with ever-changing geology and the ever-present threat of flooding, will attest that straight lines aren't always easy - or cheap.

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The power underground: To minimise environmental impact, the Goldisthal pump-fed power station in Germany took its hydropower turbines underground. From a reservoir on the Schwarza River, water will flow to the turbines through the mountain.

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Watertight Costly is as costly does: The cost of a pump involves much more than what is on the price tag. For companies seeking to reduce costly downtime, reliability counts for a lot. So do energy-efficiency and low maintenance costs. The new generation N-pumps were designed to meet those needs.

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A good pump gets better - and cheaper

Jan Lidin faced a tough job when he came to ITT Flygt in 1998 as product manager for slurry pumps: either make the product less expensive or phase it out.
The pump was good at its difficult job, which was pumping highly abrasive substances in mines, steelworks, concentrators and power plants. But it was too costly to produce, and its price was limiting sales.
"Most of our customers have one main consideration in mind when selecting slurry pumps," Lidin says. "And that is 'minimum cost per tonne of solids transported.'"
To make the pump price-competitive, Lidin and his team streamlined the pump's design and used new casting technology to reduce expensive machining costs. Designers took more than 80 items from the assembly, either because they weren't needed after the casting improvements, or because surveys showed that few customers made use of the features.
The result was a 35 percent reduction in the pump's cost - with no loss in performance. The first prototypes have been running since November 1999, Lidin says, "and customers are very pleased with their performance."

Gorillas in the Bronx

A rainforest thrives in the shadow of metropolitan New York, where visitors can get a close-up view of gorillas, okapis, colobus monkeys and other rainforest species.
The Congo Gorilla Forest at the Bronx Zoo gives visitors a real feeling for the ecology of a rainforest. Opened in June 1999, the 2.6 km2 forest features a 550-metre trail that winds through a landscape of tangled vines, overhanging trees and splashing waterfalls.
Central to the rainforest's design are its water features, which not only evoke the sense of a real rainforest but also are needed to mask the noise of jet planes, traffic and ice cream trucks. Six Flygt CS 3102 submersible pumps, each equipped with a 3,4 kW (5 hp) motor, feed the three 38,000-litre reservoirs that feed the 14 jungle waterfalls.
The water runs through streams and brooks, and is turned into "fog" by hidden water emitters before returning to the pump wells for re-circulation. The Flygt pumps, which are completely out of view, were chosen in part for their quiet-running operation.

"Water is a public trust"

A decade after returning from exile to his native South Africa, Kader Asmal has won the prestigious Stockholm Water Prize 2000 for helping forge his nation's forward-looking water policy.
As South Africa's minister for water affairs and forestry, Asmal was instrumental in shaping the National Water Act of 1998, called "the most comprehensive and visionary in the world." The Stockholm prize honours achievements in protecting the world's water resources.
When Asmal became minister in 1994, nearly a third of the country's 40 million residents did not have access to clean drinking water and almost half had no appropriate sanitation. During his four years' tenure, the department provided water to seven million additional people, directly or indirectly.
Central to the National Water Act is the concept of a water reserve that puts ecological and human water needs ahead of those of commercial or industrial users. "When allocating water, your primary concern is the environment and the secondary concern is to meet basic human needs," Asmal says.