28% of SA water works did not comply with faecal coliforms standard

Tuesday, 27 January 2009 10:50

The Business Day reported that a recent survey of 181 small water treatment works in SA found that 28% of the works did not comply with the faecal coliforms standard - an indicator of contamination from human faeces. 50% of the operators and supervisors who were questioned in the survey didn’t know basic information that is needed to allow the correct dosing of chemicals, and another survey found most small wastewater treatment plants to not comply with discharge standards.

Under-investment by most municipalities in the replacement or refurbishment of equipment is leading to an ageing infrastructure, and maintenance budgets are often simply not enough. The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe should be a dire warning to us, and while no one anticipates such a collapse in our own infrastructure, there are now serious concerns that need to be addressed.

The business day article goes on further to say that : In the controversy surrounding the remarks made by Antony Turton (the former CSIR researcher) on a potential or pending "water crisis" in SA, nobody disputed the key underlying facts: SA is a water-scarce country with limited availability of fresh water per person. The ability of natural water systems to absorb, process and dilute pollutants is diminishing as water use increases through economic development and population growth.

Our risks lie with implementation. Our primary constraint, unlike Zimbabwe, is not money, but human capacity. Alyson Lawless, author of Needs and Numbers, has detailed the critical shortage of engineers in the municipal sector. Turton argued that we have under-invested in the development of scientific capacity in the water sector.

For the source article, go to Business Day

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