Drop reports showed that municipal water and waste water services have generally declined sharply over the last 10 years and that the decline in the delivery of municipal water services happened despite high levels of support from the national government to municipalities.
WATER and and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina has called on South Africans to treat water like a scarce resource and for municipalities to fix the leaks in their water distribution systems.
Delivering her executive statement on water security in the National Assembly on Tuesday, Majodina also warned that water availability could deteriorate rapidly in the country as the demand escalated.
“Raw (untreated) water supply is currently approximately in balance with existing demand on a national scale, but there are localised deficits in the supply of water such as in Gauteng and parts of KwaZulu-Natal.
“However, water availability in South Africa could deteriorate rapidly as supply contracts and demand escalates due to economic growth, population growth, urbanization, inefficient use, including increasing physical losses in municipal distribution systems, degradation of wetlands, and the impacts of climate change.”
Delays in the implementation of surface water resource development projects have now been addressed and all planned projects accelerated.
“The projects will address future raw water needs for industry, agriculture and domestic use,” she said.
Majodina added there were limits to which South Africa could keep building dams to address its water security needs.
“We are already harnessing approximately 75% of our feasible surface water resources, and the remaining opportunities for capturing surface water in large dams are expensive.”
“If we are to avoid water shortages in future, South Africans need to change their behaviour and treat water like the scarce resource that it is.
“This means that municipalities must fix the leaks in their water distribution systems. We cannot afford to throw away almost half of the water that is supplied to municipalities through leaks.”
Majodina said current water supply disruptions in Gauteng, eThekwini and surrounding municipalities were not caused by drought.
“They are caused by rapid growth in the demand for water in these cities, caused partly by population growth and partly by increasing leaks in municipal water distribution systems.
“The leaks are in turn the result of under-budgeting for infrastructure maintenance by municipalities, which is partly caused by weak municipal billing and revenue collection for water services.”
The minister said the Drop reports showed that municipal water and waste water services have generally declined sharply over the last 10 years and that the decline in the delivery of municipal water services happened despite high levels of support from the national government to municipalities.
“This indicates that support is necessary but not sufficient to turn around the decline, and structural reform of the municipal water services function is also required.
“The solution is not for the national government to take over municipal water functions,” she said.
Cape Times
