Water, Sewage & Effluent September October 2018 | Page 30

Can we get
South Africa
to recycle
its water?
Circular economy or going around in circles? While the problem is complex,
can there be simple solutions to the water issues gripping the country?
By Dr Henry Roman
T
he drought that is gripping parts of
our country has focused attention
on the urgent need for government,
the private sector, and citizens to
find intelligent ways of managing our
limited water resources. The problem
is complex, but one obvious solution
is to recycle water, increasing the
amount of water available and enabling
the water sector’s contribution to the
circular economy.
Of course, a circular water
economy is far more than recycling,
encompassing greater efficiency in
water use and the reduction of waste,
among other things.
As far as policy is concerned, the
Water Research Commission (WRC)
is managing the implementation of the
2015 Water Research, Development,
and Innovation (RDI) Roadmap, with
oversight from the Department of
Science and Technology, in response
to the need for RDI identified in the
National Water Resources Strategy.
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One of the roadmap’s objectives is
to increase the ability of the water
sector to use more sources of water,
including alternatives such as reused
or recycled water. The target of the
roadmap is for 75% of all treated
wastewater to be reused. Can South
Africa do this? We can — but only
with political will, a pricing strategy
based on water sources, and effective
public-private partnerships in the
water economy.
There is an enormous amount of
information available to guide water
recycling efforts. Perhaps more needs
to be done to get academic evidence
and findings circulated outside
higher education, and to ensure that
stakeholders access the information
generated by the WRC. Government
itself has published some useful
guidelines.
While recent shortages have
sharpened current awareness of
the need to reuse water, a best
Water Sewage & Effluent September/October 2018
practice guideline on water reuse
and reclamation was published by the
then Department of Water Affairs and
Forestry (DWAF) — the functions of
which now fall under the Department
of Water and Sanitation and the
Department of Agriculture, Forestry
and Fisheries — as long ago as 2006.
While the guideline was written with
mining in mind, many of its concepts
are equally relevant to wastewater
treatment and could have been
applied in other contexts with better
understanding from decision-makers.
South Africa has been thinking
about and working on reusing
water for decades, as described,
for example in a 2016 Council for
Scientific and Industrial Research
article on recycling in Atlantis, an
aquifer in the Western Cape. The
aquifer contributes to the recycling of
urban stormwater runoff and treated
domestic wastewater through what is
known as managed aquifer recharge.