Felix Reinders
ARC-INSTITUTE FOR AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING
A
ccording to a study conducted by the Water
Research Commission,
the country loses at least
37% of its water through NonRevenue Water. This equates to
about R7 Billion loss per annum in
revenue for municipalities. Our future water security and sustainability will only be guaranteed when
government, private sector and civil
society take the responsibility of
conserving and preserving the wa-
ter resources which we have access
to today.
Irrigation in South Africa is currently
practiced on 1, 6 million hectare
and it uses 60% of the available
water. There is approximately 15
000 medium and large commercial
farmers. Small-scale farmers also
play a vital role in irrigated agriculture.
Through excellent research over a
number of years an innovative Wa-
ter Administration System (WAS)
was developed that assist in management of water in especially the
lager schemes in South Africa. WAS
already received several international and local awards for innovative
technology.
The WAS is an integrated management tool for irrigation schemes
that delivers water on demand
through canal networks, pipelines
and rivers. This excellent management tool was developed by Dr Ni-
Figure 1: Generating of water use reports