In 2019 the 11th Eastern European IWA YWP Conference for Young Water Professionals will take place in a Europe's most romantic city - Prague! The motto of the conference reflects the importance of water in the country and in the whole region of central and eastern Europe. Therefore the care about water has a long tradition in this country.

The first Czech Water Act was issued by local parliament in 1870. The beginning of the 20th century was the period on intense construction of dams in Czech border mountains with the aim to secure enough water for growing population and industry and to control floods. Prague was one of the first towns in this region which was equipped with wastewater treatment plant commissio-ned in 1906.

In 1910 the first trickling filter in central Europe was installed in Czech spa town Jáchymov. After the 2nd World War the construction of large dams culminated, for example, in 1975 the construction of Želivka dam and water work was finished which is still one of the biggest sources of drinking water in the region with capacity of 7 m3/s. The activated sludge process was applied already in the 1930s. The progress in activated sludge research has been connected since the 1960s with our university and many priority research papers can be found in IWA journals.

The university was also the birth place of IWA Specialist Group on Activated Sludge Population Dynamics in 1988 (the group is today known as Microbial Ecology and Water Engineering). The Czech Republic was one of the founding country members of IWA in 1965, the Czech experts are active in three EU commissions on protection of international rivers (the Elbe, The Oder and the Danube). Therefore the Czech Republic is proud to be a host of the 2019 IWA YWP conference and to welcome in its capital city Prague the young water experts who will come with a lot of new and intriguing ideas.