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Eastern Cape Runs out of Water

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:12:47 +0000

THE national government has declared drought-hit Amathole District Municipality a disaster area.

Typical is Dutya, where desperate residents have been queueing for water until late at night after their water dried up 10 days ago.

Municipal spokesperson Gail Pullen said they were one of five district municipalities declared disaster areas.

Their dams had completely run dry in such towns as Bedford, Adelaide, Chintsa, Dutywa and, recently, Hogsback.

Cathcart had about a month’s supply of water left.

In Dutywa yesterday, some people collected water from a tanker while others walked around with empty buckets and bottles looking for a place to fill up with water.

“We are struggling very much,” said local resident Toto Jack. “What we have to do is stand in long queues, sometimes till nine at night, and when the water tanks are empty we just have to go back and try again tomorrow.”

Jack, who grew up in Dutywa, said: “All my life I am living here and it has never been this bad. Since last year there have been water restrictions and what is worse is that we don’t hear anything from the municipality.

“We feel terrible that we don’t know when this problem will end. We can’t live like this.”

Local businesses are furious with the lack of a steady water supply.

Yolanda Mausi, of Mausa’s Salon, said they had been forced to close shop for the past three weeks because the municipality had failed to provide JoJo tanks to the town’s CBD. “We need about 80 litres of water a day to do our business. Today is the first time these water tanks are stopping on this road.”

Dutywa hotel owner John Botha said his business was suffering. “Last week all 33 rooms were full and our guests could only shower in the afternoon, using the rain water we had collected.” He had requested water tanks from the municipality but had not received them.

Pupils staying at hostels in Dutywa said the situation was hampering their learning time.

“We sometimes don’t get a chance to do our homework because we finish class at three in the afternoon and then we have to go and fetch water from the tanks,” said Mida Christian School Grade 12 pupil Sinazo Dlambulo. “When the lines are long we wait there till 9, 10, or even 11pm, so there is no time for us to study.”

Her friend Aneza Luningo said they also had to contend with bullies. “We wait in the lines for a long time and sometimes bullies come and try to steal our water. So we have to fight to keep our buckets.”

For others, like concerned resident Yonela Kwinana, hygiene is a major concern as there is not enough water to clean themselves properly.

Toilets no longer work. Sibongile Futshane said she and her family had no choice but to go into the fields.

Pullen said the municipality had contingency plans. “We are doing the best we can with what we have. We are tankering water to a number of towns within the district where dams have run dry. We are currently hiring two 30 000 litre tankers to cart water from Butterworth to fill up 11 JoJo tanks that we have placed in Dutywa. In addition, we are using two 10 000 litre tankers (one of them hired) to cart water for the Goven Mbeki and Mputhi Villages.”

Pullen said they applied for R156million in drought relief funding from the national Treasury. So far, they had received only R12m. It cost the municipality about R25000 a day to tanker water to Chintsa alone.

“We are looking at all other alternatives, including sinking and commissioning boreholes … Even the boreholes are starting to run dry.

“We have established a drought task team and have developed a drought action plan to try and provide water to all our affected communities. However, we are in urgent need of additional funding.” — By LOIS MOODLEY Daily Dispatch

Water Shortage looms for China, India

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 09:17:16 +0000

NEW DELHI/BEIJING: A fight breaks out as student Vikas Dagar jostles with dozens of men, women and children to fill buckets from a water tank truck that brings water twice a week to the village of Jharoda Kalan on the outskirts of New Delhi.

Nineteen hundred miles away, near Xi’an in central China, power-plant worker Zhou Jie stands on the mostly dry bed of the Wei River, remembering when he used to fish there before pollution made the catch inedible.

Dagar and Zhou show the daily struggle with tainted or inadequate water in India and China, a growing shortage that the World Bank says will hamper growth in the two countries. It also is pitting water-intensive businesses such as Intel Corp.’s China unit and bottling plants of Coca-Cola Co. against growing urban use and the 1.6 billion people in China and India who rely on farming for a living.

“Water will become the next big power, not only in China but the whole world,” Li Haifeng, vice president at sewage-treatment company Beijing Enterprises Water Group, said in a telephone interview. “Wars may start over the scarcity of water.”

About 2.4 billion people live in “water-stressed” countries such as China, according to a 2009 report by the Pacific Institute, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit scientific research group. Water scarcity and pollution reduce China’s gross domestic product by about 2.3 percent, the World Bank said in a 2007 report.

Water demand in the next two decades will double in India and rise 32 percent in China, according to the 2030 Water Resources Group, a research collaboration between the World Bank, management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and industrial water users such as Coca-Cola.

China’s 1.33 billion people each have 2,117 cubic meters of water available per year, compared with 1,614 cubic meters in India and as much as 9,943 cubic meters in the United States, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The 1.2 billion people in India, where farmers use 80 percent of available water, will exhaust their fresh-water supplies by 2050 at the current rate, the World Bank estimates.

For Dagar, 21, and the 200 other villagers in Jharoda Kalan, that dearth is already a daily fact of life.

“This is for our drinking and cooking,” he said, pointing to four bucketfuls he won from the fight. “I’ve been waiting for the past hour.”

Southwest China had its worst drought in a century this year, prompting Premier Wen Jiabao to say that the country would face a test to meet its grain output target. The drought affected 24 million people and 16 million acres of arable land, Liu Ning, vice-minister of water resources, said on March 31.

China, with 20 percent of the world’s population and 7 percent of its fresh water, has contaminated 70 percent of its rivers and lakes, while half the cities have polluted groundwater, according to the World Bank. By 2030 China will have a supply shortfall of 201 billion cubic meters unless the government takes steps to control demand, McKinsey partner Martin Joerss in Beijing wrote in an April report.

The Wei river was rated “severely polluted” by the government in 2009, according to a March 2 report in state-run China Daily. That’s forced Zhou to fish instead in pools near the river. The river level has dropped by about three-quarters in some places in the past decade, he said.

The pollution and shrinking rivers are partly a result of China’s rapid industrialization. Economic growth accelerated to 11.9 percent in the first quarter, the fastest pace in almost three years. It is set to reach 10.5 percent this year, according to some estimates.

“China can solve this problem in a way that creates economic value as opposed to economic cost,” said Joerss in an interview. “There is tremendous, though largely untapped, opportunity to meet China’s enormous need for water resources by focusing on better managing demand.”

“Water is a resource under great pressure in China and globally,” said Kenth Kaerhoeg, a spokesman in Hong Kong for Coca-Cola Pacific, which has water recovery systems at its 39 plants in China to reduce consumption. “Economic development, climate change and population growth will increase pressure on freshwater resources in China.”

In March, a panel from the southern Indian state of Kerala recommended suing Coca-Cola bottler Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages for $48 million damages for contamination and “serious depletion” of water in the town of Palakkad. In an April 26 e-mail, the company denied that its plant, shut since March 2004, depleted or tainted the town’s water.

In both China and India, fresh water reserves are unevenly distributed.

Northern China, with cities including Beijing, the capital, has less than a fifth of the country’s fresh water and almost half the population, the World Bank said.

Former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, who began trying to address the water issue as early as the 1950s, conceived the South-North Water Diversion Project to carry water along three routes from the Yangtze River to the Yellow River. Construction began in 2003 and has cost more than $5.8 billion so far. The completion date has been pushed back four years to 2014 as costs and environmental concerns mount.

Government proposals in India were no less ambitious. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2003 appointed a panel to assess building a series of dams and canals that would link rivers to control floods and curtail shortages. The 5-trillion-rupee plan was shelved after protests from environmentalists.

Instead, India has concentrated on conservation. The government has made it mandatory for new houses and condominiums in cities to collect rainwater in water tanks in an effort to curb a decline in groundwater levels.

The Congress-led coalition is also implementing a six-year-old plan to replenish about a million lakes, ponds and water tanks. About 60 percent of India’s arable land still depends on the annual monsoon.

“Water availability has declined to such an extent that many parts of India today face a drought-like situation,” said Sushmita Sengupta, research associate at the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi.

The two countries’ plans don’t always mesh.

When China dammed the Mekong, the largest river flowing into Southeast Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos all called for greater cooperation to prevent droughts and floods. China also plans a dam in Tibet on the Yarlung Zangbo, the highest major river in the world, which flows into India as the Brahmaputra.

The project would give Beijing control of the water supply to more than 90,000 square kilometers of land controlled by India while China claims sovereignty.

“Water scarcity is probably one of the biggest risks for investors in China and India,” said Lucy Carmody, executive director of Singapore-based investor advisory firm Responsible Research. “There is a lot of potential for border conflicts.”

Arab News - By Bloomberg

Earth Day: Natural Gas seeps into an Aquifer

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:29:11 +0000

In Earth years, a 40th anniversary isn’t much. Likewise, in community awareness, Earth Day is scarcely a blip on the local radar.Yet, in morning headlines and nightly news, the planet continues to remind us that it won’t be ignored.

A volcano shuts down air travel across Europe. Earthquakes wreak havoc in all hemispheres, from Haiti to Chili to China.

In our lush corner of the world, we find ourselves confronted not with seismic events beyond our control but with activities that can put us at odds with the preservation of our water, land and air. Sure, we’re all agog at azaleas; but we also need a deeper appreciation for cultivating a healthy environment.

Folks in south Caddo can tell you how fragile our surroundings can be. They have spent the week sleeping away from home after a well-site incident led to the discovery of natural gas in their drinking water. Presumably some agency will bore down into the exact cause and source for contamination of the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer. But, for the moment, it raises uncomfortable specters.

Has nature itself turned on the aquifer, allowing gas deposits to seep into water wells? Did technological hubris lead gas exploration in the Haynesville Shale beyond the bounds of safety? Or did human error short-circuit safeguards?

In any scenario, the public needs the assurance that systems are in place to protect us and the environment. Sadly, that assurance is lacking.

Front-line responders from the state departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Hospitals may be working to assess the risk, but efforts lack sufficient urgency to satisfy evacuated residents.

Further, the apparatus to monitor well water quality is so under-resourced that there is no baseline from which to determine how much, if any, natural gas existed before in the aquifer. And when people are cleared finally to return home, there are too few answers about the potential hazards to people and pets, wildlife and livestock. How often will these people need to get water tested?

Once again in the wake of a well-site accident, the folks in charge of drilling permits — whether for natural gas or drinking water — are conspicuously silent. The state Department of Natural Resources, through its Office of Conservation, should be keeping the public up to date on its investigation and forthcoming about its previous inspections of the Exco Resources Inc. well site. The Exco location includes three wells: the one that was being drilled, another that had been drilled and hydraulically fractured, and a third that has been drilled but not “fracked.”

Caddo Sheriff Steve Prator was expressing frustration comparable to last year’s livestock deaths, when cattle in south Caddo lapped up contaminated water. Wednesday, he turned to the governor asking him to spur on the various state agencies involved. We second that emotion.

And what better day than Earth Day for an executive order telling state regulators to clean up their acts?

Desalination, aquifers, sustainability and the Minister of Water Affairs

admin — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:52:30 +0000

The article by Melanie Gosling, environmental Affairs writer refers.

Water and Environmental Affairs (DWEA) Minister Buyelwa Sonjica has said that her department was forging ahead with plans to supply desalinated water to Cape Town, and furthermore extract water from the Table Mountain (TM) aquifer.

As mentioned in the article, all rivers in the Western Cape have been dammed, and the maximum amount of water is being extracted. There is no more water that can possibly be squeezed from our rivers. What was not said is that this water is used, polluted and largely wasted to rivers around the Western Cape with concomitant damage to riverine and marine life.

The focus has always been and remains to supply more and more water.

Now DWEA are looking at other ways, hence the aquifer extraction and sea water desalination. Has the Minister not been advised by scientists that by extracting fossil water from the TM aquifer, the relatively finite amount of water in the aquifer is being permanently reduced for all practical intents and purposes. This is a fossil aquifer, and has been there for millions of years. Not only would extraction permanently reduce the amount of water in the aquifer, but it would also jeopardise plant and animal life as well as rivers within the aquifer system. If you for instance pump water out near Cape Town, there will be a lessening of available water as far as Port Elizabeth!

Desalination plants are able to send distasteful but pure water to Cape Town, but how do desalination plants dispose of the high saline water once the pure water has been extracted? This high saline water is sent back to the sea. The plants and animals that are found within the sea current of this highly saline water are likely to be adversely affected. This is aside from the higher cost of the water to consumers.

One of the problems with supplying more water is that this means more water going into the sewers. Local sewage plants spill up to 35% of the volume of raw untreated effluent into estuaries, rivers canals, and directly into the sea. This is because they are not able to cope with the current amount of water passing through them, let alone any future augmented amount. The money charged for the treatment of sewerage is not currently being put back into maintenance and building of new sewage treatment works. This money is used elsewhere.

Not only does this mean that there are plans to use water which is not sustainable, but treatment of the effluent which is not currently sustainable, is going to be further degraded. I need to put this very simply for all South Africans to understand, and not just the Minister of Water Affairs: Desalination of sea water is not sustainable. This process of supply of water destroys the sea, land and air. Removal of ground water from the TM Aquifer is not sustainable. This cannot be difficult to comprehend.

Please rather put the money that you would have spent on your proposed but unsustainable augmentation systems into education, to teach people to use less water. After all the first democratic Minister of Water Affairs Prof. Kader Asmal, said: “Ways must be found to use less water”. Instead of augmenting the supply of water, the demand for water must be managed and reduced. There are many ways to do this, but at present none are being prioritised. The recent water week passed unmentioned (and probably unnoticed) by government or the press.

Eskom has made environmentally laughable their rebate system for solar geysers with their new loan to build a huge coal fired generating plant with a loan, the biggest ever given to anyone by the World Bank. I appeal to the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs not to make a similar environmental fool of themselves by giving lip service to the use of less water (which is all the effort they are currently putting into the management and reduction of the demand for water) while at the same time introducing new unsustainable and environmentally unsound water supplies. Never has it been truer, that energy and water are inseparably intertwined. Each kilowatt hour of electricity generated in South Africa costs 1.32 litres of water, making ESKOM the biggest single consumer of water in the country. This situation is made far worse by adding dirty power for manufacturing clean water to the list of environmental misdemeanours.

This announcement to desalinate sea water is just too close to the announcement last week of the approval of the building of this new power station. Has our Minister been asked please to spend some of this new electricity supply on energy hungry desalination plants? Any thoughts about environmental matters? Water and Environmental Affairs fall within the same Ministerial Department. It seems that Environmental Affairs is currently being sidelined to the detriment of the country.

Jeremy Westgarth-Taylor