Wandering ways of water
Water supply: from a cruise ship to Venice, a Roman villa,
and a 500-year-old water letter.
By Helgard Muller, Pr Eng
T
ravelling by cruise ship to Venice
and touring through parts of
Italy provided me with a unique
opportunity. Over and above the
advertised ‘must see sights’ and the
usual ‘tourist traps’, one remained
curious about water supply to a village
or simply could not miss standing in
wonder at an artistic water feature
or fountain in a campo (or piazza). Let
me share some of these extraordinary
peeps into water supply, which you may
not find in the usual Lonely Planet or
other travel guide books.
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Water provision on a
cruise ship
Cruise ships have continued to gain
popularity over the years because of
the unique way they conduct business
and pleasure. The one-of-a-kind manner
of entertaining people on-board cruise
ships has become a statement that
has lured many people to spend their
holidays aboard such ships. Certain
cruise ships have even been designed
as hospice centres fully equipped with
hospital amenities and a fully operational
Water Sewage & Effluent July/August 2017
mortuary, solely catering for the
terminally-ill individuals who prefer to be
on a cruise ship and wait for their destiny
rather than be confined to a hospital bed.
The modern cruise ship is not only
a floating hotel but also an engineering
marvel, generating its own electricity
and water, and fulfilling all the logistics
of food, drinks, and waste. A typical
cruise ship, such as the MSC Sinfonia
that annually takes thousands of South
Africans on excursions from our ports,
needs 100 tons of diesel per day to
propel the ship through the seas while