as much as 35% of water is being lost
before reaching the consumer, while
56% of wastewater treatment works
are poorly managed and are in a critical
state. In terms of water treatment
facilities, only 44% are reportedly in
good shape.
As a country, we are committed
to providing universal access to
water — we want everyone to have
access to clean water. There has been
considerable progress, with about 89%
of the population reported to now have
access to clean water, but we still need
to improve the level of reliability of that
water — which the research shows to
be at only 63%.
For a water-scarce country, we are
also still using more water per person
than we should. While the international
water consumption average is 173 litres
per person per day, South Africans
use on average about 237 litres.
Managing our water quality — as part
of water resource management — has
to involve an integrated approach,
as the downstream users and the
upstream dischargers are always
interrelated. u
About the author
Manda Hinsch is a partner and
principal scientist (Water and
Environment) at SRK Consulting (SA).
She has 35 years’ experience in
the fields of water and waste, both
nationally and internationally. Her
areas of expertise include project
management and coordination of
environmental authorisations, water
quality management, allocation, policy
development and implementation;
water resource management, and
water use licence applications.
innovations
version of the unit used in India in 2016 and provides
service to 100 users a day. That unit was connected
to two electronic toilets in India. In South Africa,
they will be connected to CABs. The second
unit will ambitiously increase the capacity of the
NEWgenerator 10-fold and serve 1 000 users a day. u
The Hippo Roller is making the lives of communities easier
when it comes to carrying water over long distances.
SA’s Hippo Roller goes global
The USF-developed NEWgenerator will be installed in Durban.
Hippo Roller replaces the back-breaking task of carrying
water for kilometres in rural areas, often through uneven
terrain. Instead of using their head to carry a standard 20ℓ
bucket of water, the Hippo Roller allows users to transport
five times as much water as a traditional 20ℓ bucket. A South
African product, the Hippo Roller is rolled on the ground and
has been distributed in more than 29 countries.
The project was established in 1994 to tackle the lack of
access to water — a challenge in rural communities in South
Africa.
Millions of women and children struggle daily to collect
water. It is for this group that the Hippo Roller has an
immediate impact, by significantly improving their ability to
collect more water, more efficiently, thereby empowering
women to spend more time on education and other tasks in
the home and community.
The Hippo Roller Project leverages its relationships with
sponsors, corporate partners, and NGOs to provide African
communities with an immediate water solution. u
Contact details
Email: [email protected]
Telephone SA: +27 (0) 82 944 4776
Telephone USA: +1 (518) 709 4807
Water Sewage & Effluent January/February 2018
31
Here, the authorities are not always
able to collect all the revenue that is
owed to them by consumers — which
undermines the management and
monitoring of both the water treatment
and the wastewater treatment works
under their control.
Chlorine treatment remains the
standard disinfectant in municipal
water treatment plants and is the most
effective of all methods of disinfection,
considering the challenges faced
in South Africa in terms of cost and
resource capacity. Chlorine is, however,
only effective if sufficient contact time
is applied; technology like sand filters
only removes the suspended solids but
do not necessarily eliminate parasites,
viruses, and bacteria. Ultraviolet and
ozone technology is also an option, but
is expensive and has its own limitations.
Statistics South Africa has reported that