The clock is ticking for South Africa’s stretched water supply, and in another five years demand will have caught up with supply, according to a top official. Jones Mnisi, acting chief operating officer at Johannesburg Water, the public utility overseeing supply in the country’s economic hub, told a recent conference on water security that the tipping point where demand outstripped supply may not be far away.
South Africa is chronically water-stressed. Although growth has slowed, an expanding economy, a growing population, and increased evaporation caused by climate change are conspiring to put additional pressures on water resources. Yet leading experts at the conference said the situation could be addressed if the country curbed demand and improved water quality to facilitate reuse.
[...] Although the next phase of the [multi-dam Lesotho Highlands Water Project], expected to be in place in 2019, could relieve some of the pressure on South Africa’s water supply, it was likely to be too late, said Chris Herold, chairman of the water division of the South African Institute of Civil Engineering (SAICE).
Quantity and quality
Experts said the quality and quantity of the water supply should be better managed, and called for more investment in infrastructure. “The national water resource strategy has assumed that water demand management will happen,” said Herold, “On the implementation side, some of the local authorities have not come to the party.”
Anthony Turton, a former researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, who now works as a water management consultant, predicted that South Africa would soon have to start reusing effluent, which would entail revamping infrastructure, with waste treatment plants a priority.
[...] He and others have also begun to conclude that if water could be stored in underground man-made aquifers, he said, it could save a vast quantity of water from evaporation annually.
[...] Water and sanitation remain contentious issues, and government has assured South Africans that it will commit more funds to improve water infrastructure, deploy personnel to local government to oversee operations, build capacity, and ensure proper financial management. A recent progress report card on the UN Millennium Development Goals said the country was on track for achieving access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015.
“Water service provision is critical, and it is a sensitive issue,” Turton said. “We have to give people everything that the struggle was about, like dignity. If we don’t, we’re going to have a lot of angry people.”
SAICE’s Herold said government should crack down on hundreds of farmers who used water illegally from the Vaal River, 100km south of Johannesburg, which supplies the city. The department of water affairs has established a unit, known as the “Blue Scorpions”, to police illegal bulk water use.
Source: IRIN, 22 May 2009
Great post, I think that the more awareness we put out there regarding this issue, the better. I shudder to think though that this situation is the exclusive arena of Government. They are notorious for their delayed reaction\action on these issues (think Eskom) and I think that it is up to us an individuals and small business to make the changes at the micro level. A slight change in actions and ways of interaction with water is necessary. What do you think of grey water reuse for irrigation? We’re trying to get in at the large scale development stage-cluster houses\low cost housing dev. etc.
Its most definitely something worth working toward.
Andrew Malherbe