The Civil Engineering Contractor January 2019 | Page 25

TECHNOLOGY
“If it [War on Leaks] were done properly, it is hard for
me to think of a better way to spend taxpayer money
than by training 15 000 plumbers to go to work repairing
the nation’s infrastructure.”
usage; use of cleansed wastewater in
agriculture; and the implementation
of new methods such as the
desalination of seawater, which now
provides almost unlimited water
resources.
Willie de Jager, MD of Corestruc,
a company which manufactures and
installs concrete precast structures
including water reservoirs, outlines
the water needs at municipal level as
contained in the government’s Draft
Water Strategy:
• 89% of households have access
to operational services but
reliability is only at 63%.
• Current access to sanitation
services is 80% on average (50%
in some local municipalities).
• It is reported that 56% of the
approximately 1 150 wastewater
treatment works are in poor
or critical state, and need to
be rehabilitated urgently and
properly maintained afterwards.
• 44% of 962 domestic water
treatment works are in a poor
condition and need urgent
rehabilitation. This excludes
private works and industrial
treatment.
He notes that water, sanitation,
and health infrastructure is a global
challenge, and the majority of the
world’s communities that lack
improved sanitation facilities or
a reliable supply of potable water
reside in rural areas of Africa.
“Corestruc sees huge potential for
its complete reservoir construction
projects in other countries, such
as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and
Namibia, and we have been liaising
with client bodies and professional
teams in these countries,” says De
www.civilsonline.co.za
Jager. Its primary market is South
Africa.
‘Wat ‘er the alternatives?’
According to an Institute for
Security Studies report, A Delicate
Balance: Water Scarcity in South Africa,
“At a national level, this research has
pointed to broad areas that the South
African government can focus on:
increasing the amount of wastewater
that is treated and reused, minimising
non-revenue water or otherwise
increasing efficiency in the municipal
sector, increasing the intensity of
groundwater use in areas where it is
sustainable, and increasing the share
of renewable sources in the national
energy mix.”
Consequently, there are several
ways of improving water supply,
not all of which require massive
expenditure:
• New dams and reservoirs
• Wastewater treatment
• Conservation
• Desalination
• Public-private
partnerships
(PPPs)
• Getting people to pay (and so
reducing non-revenue water).
New dams and reservoirs: Due
to high variability in river flow, both
within a year and between years,
storage needs to be provided to
cater for low-flow periods, through
dams and reservoirs. Some rivers
experience three to six times their
average flows in wet years, water
that runs into the ocean unless
dammed. According to a report by
Sancold, the Vaal’s flow in some
years is only 10% of its potential,
but with the Vaal and Grootdraai
dams, this has become controlled at
50% as the long-term average flow.
Wastewater treatment: According
to the latest Aquastat data (from
2009), South Africa only treats about
54% of its municipal wastewater.
This compares to almost 90% in
Israel. Furthermore, South Africa’s
existing wastewater treatment
infrastructure requires substantial
investment. The 2014 Green Drop
Report concluded that nearly a
quarter of South Africa’s wastewater
treatment facilities are in a ‘critical
state’, defined as needing urgent
intervention, while roughly another
quarter are defined as ‘high risk’.
Conservation: Water conservation
and efficient usage of it are the
cheapest, most available sources of
water. The Israeli Water Authority
explains that “Savings campaigns
carried out in the past have shown,
without doubt, that 10–20% of [the]
total consumed in the municipal
sector may be saved, while making
sure not to affect the consumer’s
welfare.” This last part is perhaps
the most important. It is possible
to decrease water consumption on
a large scale, without significant
sacrifices in the day-to-day lives
of South Africans. The previously
announced War on Leaks campaign
by the Department of Water and
Sanitation (DWS), which was not
fully implemented, could have
resulted in 15 000 plumbers having
been trained to address the multiple
water management problems.
A Delicate Balance: Water Scarcity
in South Africa states: “There is a
misconception that water restrictions
are draconian measures reserved for
near-emergency situations such as
those in the Western Cape or in
California in 2014/15. However,
examples from other communities
demonstrate that conservation need
not compromise quality of life.
Tucson, Arizona, is a city with a
population of about 500 000 that
receives about 30cm of rainfall a
year. The municipality began to run
out of groundwater in the 1970s
CEC January 2019 | 23