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

Dire water shortages from rivers running dry in the Eastern Cape and the central and southern part of the Western Cape, in what AgriSA terms the “worst drought in 130 years”, have focused attention on the lack of regional infrastructure plans and a regulating authority to oversee water pricing.

Emergency measures have had to be taken, including trucking in water and a planned desalination plant at Knysna to avert a disaster facing mainly dairy and vegetable farmers, who have dedicated supply lines to retail outlets but have cut back on their production. AgriSA Western Cape chief executive Carl Opperman said: “This will have a ripple effect down the supply chain ultimately.”

AgriSA predicted that countless farmers were facing insolvency in the coming year. It blamed this on years of neglect of infrastructure with no significant dams being built for lean times, as well as departmental dilly-dallying on allowing farmers to raise farm dam capacity.

At present, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica determines water prices after negotiating with water boards, which sell water to municipalities. The argument is that an independent water regulator would provide the platform for realistic prices.

Opperman said a number of southern Cape rivers running from the Outeniqua Mountains ran into the sea within six hours of rain falling in the catchment area. This water could otherwise be stored.

For example, the Ernest Robertson Dam on the Groot Brak River near George in the southern Cape is 90 percent full but its capacity is just 0.4 million cubic metres. The Wolwedans Dam on the same river, with a capacity of 25 million cubic metres, is 39 percent full, down from more than 90 percent a year ago.

The Garden Route Dam on the Swart River has a capacity of 9 million cubic metres but is now only 30 percent full, down from 92 percent a year ago, according to the Department of Water Affairs.

While the department said consideration was being given to new dams in Transkei and the southern Cape, the small size of the latter’s existing dams could be measured against Cape Town’s main supply dam, Theewaterskloof on the Riviersonderend, which was 92 percent full and had a capacity of 480 million cubic metres.

Cornelius Ruiters, the water affairs deputy director-general, said there was an argument in favour of setting up regional water regulatory authorities similar to those in water-stressed countries such as Australia and Mexico.

Nick Segal, a former head of UCT’s business school, has written a report on water stress for Business Leadership SA and estimates that there is a R100 billion backlog in spending on water infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that water was being pumped from the Orange River from a tunnel at Gariep Dam in the Free State into the Fish River to ensure appropriate supply for the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropole in the Eastern Cape.

The metro includes Despatch, Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage, which house major motor plants. They would normally be suffering severe water shortages were it not for diverted water caught in the Lesotho Highlands.

The most affected southern Cape towns include George, Knysna, Wilderness and Plettenberg Bay.

Business Times Cape Times Donwald Pressley