Late last year, not long after the United Nations named Pittsburgh as the North American host city for its 2010 World Environment Day, a group of local industry and foundation officials spearheaded by the nonprofit Sustainable Pittsburgh, brainstormed and decided on water as the theme for events that would mark the global celebration here.

Their efforts to create a signature World Environment Day event come to fruition today when a major conference, "Water Matters!" convenes at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown.

The one-day event is expected to attract 1,000 attendees, who will hear a wide range of speakers from corporate, environmental and university sectors provide their views on how best to manage the critical natural resource.

"It should be uppermost in our minds all the time," said Carl Safina, an ecologist, marine conservationist and co-founder of the Blue Ocean Institute in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. Dr. Safina was scheduled to deliver the opening keynote address for the conference.

"All of us need to feel we are stewards of water," he said in a phone interview last week. "It's something we don't make. We only use it and pass it along to other people now and in the future. ... It's our sacred responsibility."

As far as responsibility for damage to the Gulf of Mexico and its waterfront communities as a result of the catastrophic oil spill there, Dr. Safina said BP, which owns the leaking well, should pay "as much money as it takes" to clean up the destruction, but the federal government needs to assume control of managing the response.

A water theme for World Environment Day helps boost its relevance to Pittsburgh, said David Dzombak, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and faculty director of the school's Steinbrenner Institute for Environment Education and Research, which is a conference sponsor.

The Pittsburgh economy has relied on water for centuries, and in recent decades, it's been a more integral part of redevelopment as civic leaders consider ways to utilize the riverfronts, he said.

But reliance on water as a regional resource brings with it the task of dealing with issues of sustainability, he said.

"We face water infrastructure challenges here that we will be investing in and addressing now and in decades to come."

For that reason, the Steinbrenner Institute is coordinating a regional consortium to focus on innovative ways to deal with water issues now and in the future when World Environment Day is a distant memory.

The consortium hopes to identify opportunities for leveraging research and technological developments at local universities and companies and offering them as for-profit solutions inside and outside the region.

"Let's think about activities to build Pittsburgh as a water innovation center by making an inventory of capabilities that we have here, projects we'll be working on, and unique opportunities for Pittsburgh to establish itself in the global marketplace for water solutions," said Dr. Dzombak.

On today's conference agenda, several speakers will address water as an economic driver, including Gregory Koch, managing director of the global water stewardship program at soft drink giant Coca-Cola Co.

"We face just about every situation you can imagine" in managing water usage, Mr. Koch said in a phone interview from Coke's Atlanta headquarters last week.

The company -- which also produces bottled waters and juices -- maintains 1,000 plants worldwide and doesn't export its drinks because it sells them in the markets where they are made. Under its water stewardship plan, Coke evaluates risks to water quality at all its facilities and attempts to work with communities where it operates to gain "social license and emotional license for acceptance of use of the water."

"Understanding the uniqueness of the water and the stresses it's under is imperative to our business," Mr. Koch said. "It's in our business interest to understand the watershed and work with others to protect and conserve it. ... Gone are the days of water being plentiful and cheap and enough for everyone everywhere."

Other topics to be addressed by conference panels include water and health and water and energy, featuring executives from Duke Energy, Westinghouse Electric Co. and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Nancy Stoner, an administrator in the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water and an expert in the federal Clean Water Act, will deliver the closing keynote.

World Environment Day is officially marked on Saturday with worldwide events, but the U.N. encourages host cities to schedule activities beginning on Earth Day in April.

In Pittsburgh, activities to come include Saturday's Paddle at the Point, where kayaks and canoes will converge in an attempt to break a Guinness world record; and environmentally themed activities as part of the Three Rivers Arts Festival, which kicks off Friday.

For more information on today's conference and World Environment Day, go to www.pittsburghwed.com.

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