Water is the New Struggle

Extract from article by: Jocelyn Newmarch

Johannesburg — MUNICIPALITIES are struggling to provide basic water and sanitation services to all consumers, and maintenance of facilities has been dangerously neglected, infrastructure experts warn.

Without a greater focus on collecting and treating water for reuse, SA's future water security will be under threat.

This was highlighted yesterday by agricultural union TAU-SA, which warned that government would carry the burden if farmers were forced to curb production due to polluted water.

The union's deputy president, Louis Meintjes, says the government, which holds the exclusive constitutional custodianship of SA's water resources, must implement effective measures to counter the pollution of water systems to avoid loss of food production.

Contaminated food, produced with the use of water that contains poisonous heavy metals, chemicals and waste material, has been reaching the shelves of supermarkets.

Meintjies admits that farmers are also responsible for pollution by the "ill-informed" application of fertilisers and poisons. He says the union has raised concern about polluted water resources, but had been ignored by, among others, the water affairs minister. "It fell on deaf ears."

Another problem is the lack of skills in water provision, particularly at the municipal level.

Neil Macleod, eThekwini municipality's head of water and sanitation, says there are fewer than 1400 engineering professionals in local government. Many in leadership positions have risen rapidly through the ranks, resulting in a skills gap.

The Development Bank of Southern Africa hosted a dialogue on municipal water service s recently. Its report warns that there has been an overemphasis on water delivery at the expense of demand management, and that better asset management is needed.

"The deterioration in water services and the way in which delivery is proceeding will have serious implications (for) people's lives, health and wellbeing, growth and development prospects, and national water security," the bank warns. Water leakages and faulty pipes result, in some instances, in 60% of treated and purified water not being delivered to consumers, says Mr Macleod, who helped to draft the report.

Municipalities should concentrate on reducing water losses to 15% -20%, which is attainable in a developing country, he says.

Municipalities need to focus on accurate billing for the water they provide, and collecting the money owed. "If you're only collecting 60% of what you're owed, and only billing for 60% of what you provide, it doesn't take a genius to work out you're only collecting a fraction of what is owed to you."

Illegal connections to the water main are another problem, Mr Macleod says. eThekwini has about 650 000 customers connected to its network, and estimates it has up to 30 000 illegal connections. This practice is widespread in affluent suburbs and among businesses.

The development bank report says the cost of meeting service targets is far higher than infrastructure investment projections assumed in the 1990s.

Part of the problem is that in a country marked by extreme poverty and glaring inequality, the living standards of an affluent minority set the benchmark for what is considered decent services, the report says.

This means there is a growing need for operating subsidies for sustainable water services.

"It is clear, when reviewing the path of water service delivery over the first decade of democracy and beyond, how ambitious the plans are, and how much it was underestimated what it takes to provide decent water services to all, and deliver on commitments," the report says.

Funding is not a key issue in the sector. "Rather, it is the current inefficiencies that obstruct the ability to spend what we do have and to make these funds work better ... and this is a far more complex issue to resolve," it says.

With Sapa



See more http://allafrica.com/stories/201010210444.html

Johannesburg on Acidic Water Time Bomb

Millions of litres of highly acidic mine water is rising up under Johannesburg and, if left unchecked, could spill out into its streets some 18 months from now, Parliament's water affairs portfolio committee heard on Wednesday.

Extract from: Mail & Gardian O-line JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA Jul 21 2010 18:23

The acid water is currently about 600m below the city's surface, but is rising at a rate of between 0.6 and 0,9m a day, water affairs deputy director water quality management Marius Keet told MPs

"[It] can have catastrophic consequences for the Johannesburg central business district if not stopped in time. A new pumping station and upgrades to the high-density sludge treatment works are urgently required to stop disaster," he warned.

Speaking at the briefing, activist Mariette Liefferink, from the Federation for a Sustainable Environment, said the rising mine water posed an "enormous threat", which would become worse if remedial actions were further delayed.

"This environmental problem is second [in South Africa] only to global warming in terms of its impact, and poses a serious risk to the Witwatersrand as a whole. At the rate it is rising, the basin [under Johannesburg] will be fully flooded in about 18 months"

Sewage flows in streets

This is a shocking extract from www.savingwater.co.za

Sewage flows in streets

Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 02 April 2010.


A new warning has been issued to the public not to swim or fish in the Swartkops River as the water quality has deteriorated further.

Last month, the 2010 Redhouse River Mile had to be moved from the Swartkops River to Cannonville on the Sundays River due to dangerously high levels of pollution.

Jenny Rump of the Zwartkops Trust said yesterday that effluent had been flowing into the river for days because broken sewerage pipes had not been repaired. “The trust has received complaints from the residents of Aloes and Wells Estate that sewage has been running past their houses.

“It has been flowing in their streets for days now,” added Rump, The Herald General Motors Citizen of the Year. “This is dangerous for the people’s health. They have to live with the sewage smell for days,” she said

Rump said the Swartkops River, popular among swimmers and anglers, attracted a lot of visitors over the Easter weekend. Some of the stormwater drains that run through Wells Estate, which borders the sea, were broken, Rump added.

The deluge of litter that comes from the drains also joins the Swartkops River, causing two types of pollution.

“Sewage sometimes also bubbles onto the streets of Motherwell, apparently from collector stations where pumps have broken down, and then finds its way via the stormwater drains into the river,” she said.

Municipal spokesman Kupido Baron could not comment last night on the latest pollution development at the Swartkops River. “All I know is that we have been working on the issue since the time the River Mile event scheduled to take place there had to move.

“I know there is a strategy in place, and we have weekly testing of the bacteria level at the river,” he added without disclosing the nature of the plan.

Source: Weekend Post

What Dangerous Sources is your Water Coming From?

When you open your tap and clear water comes out, do you ever stop to wonder where it comes from? Do you know what the state of the pipes are that bring it to your home or office, or do you go blindly on faith hoping that the water fairy will turn it magically into the kind of quality that be helpful to your body, your family's health and your collegues health.

This is small extract that comes from an article psoted in http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/263078 on 05 December 2008. It is certanly not the first and last since then.

South Africa's largest commercial farmers' union yesterday urged the acting-president to declare a national emergency over the country's dangerously-polluted fresh water resources.
In a joint meeting with the commercial banking and farming sector and South Africa's acting-president Kgalema Motlanthe, the government was warned if fresh-water streams, dams and lakes were not cleaned up urgently, the country would soon plunge into an unprecedented humanitarian and economic crisis.

The parliamentary joint working group meeting with South Africa's commercial community and the acting president was called after the country's top water-research expert, Dr Anthony Turton of the state-funded Council for Scientific and Industrial Research warned last week that South Africa was facing very rapid socio-economic collapse due to the heavily polluted South African fresh-water resources.
He warned that all its fresh water supplies now were so heavily polluted with human excrement and waste from some 80,000 overcrowded squatter camps, chemical waste from the country's thousands of industries and mines that South Africa's very low rainfall was unable to wash it clean any longer. Even the aquifers were getting polluted. An urgent cleanup was needed - and the farmers urged the president to start with the countrywide cleanup by hiring 'competent municipal engineers' instead of unqualified ANC-cronies to repair the 181 broken municipal water-purification plants countrywide. - (Apologies, for the descriptions, this was an extract of an article. It neither reflects, our beliefs or opinions, but is for infomation puposes only)

So when you turn on the tap and hand over that glass to your child, the question is not, "should I give them this glass of water?" (because we know that clean and safe water is CRITICAL to your health. Rather you should be asking: "How can I make the water that I have access to safer."

Contact us on info@belleregalo.co.za for a easy and clinically tested method of purefying water at the home and office.