South Africa is a water scarce country. In other words, it has an excess of demand over available supply. It also has low water security, or the ability to ensure sustainable access to good quality water.
The country’s economic hub and biggest population centre, Gauteng has suffered sequential water crises that have been a blend of both factors combined with others, such as a lack of maintenance.
Caroline Southey from The Conversation Africa put questions to Craig Sheridan, director of the Centre in Water Research and Development at the University of the Witwatersrand, about the creation of a new platform, or dashboard, that features up-to-date information about the Integrated Vaal River System which feeds the region. The aim is to keep residents informed and authorities accountable.
What’s behind Gauteng’s ongoing water crises?
There are four main pressure points affecting water security in Gauteng. They are:
- The water losses through reticulation systems. Too much water — about 46% in Gauteng — is lost through failing infrastructure or theft.
- The very hot, dry weather experienced in Gauteng every year soon before the rains start (September to mid-October). This substantially drives up normal demand. Rand Water, the bulk service water provider for Gauteng, has implemented water restrictions, but these can only reduce consumption if they are followed.
- The increasing number of people living in Gauteng. If water treatment and reticulation infrastructure is not upgraded, it is not able to cope with increased demand. This can result in reservoirs running empty. Rand Water has been conducting system upgrades across the province and Phase 2 of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project has commenced, which will increase water supply by 2028.
- The impact of climate change. It is getting hotter. This places increased demands on the supply of water. Also, water stored in dams evaporates far more quickly.
How will the ‘dashboard’ improve water management?
The “water dashboard” has been developed to provide meaningful, reliable and up-to-date information so residents can make informed decisions about their personal water use. The information for all cities in the province can be found in one place.
A similar approach was used by the City of Cape Town to avert a serious water shortage crisis during the five-year drought which ended in 2018 after some of the driest years recorded.
The provision of regular information (weekly in that case) helped residents understand how bad things were without the engineering jargon. It helped to inform society, and that helped to prevent “day zero”, the point where there is no further water available for extraction in the storage systems, from happening.
Similarly, in Gauteng the idea is to inform people. The hope is they will reduce water consumption when faced with evidence that storage levels have dropped. If people know how bad things are, they can use less and avoid the day-zero type crisis.
The dashboard considers the entire province rather than focusing on one city.
In my view it should be welcomed as a serious intervention because it has the potential to provide residents with accurate information. This is particularly useful given they are in the middle of severe water outages.
How will it work?
For now, the dashboard is static, but the aim is to make it interactive, which will allow users to drill down for more detailed information.
The dashboard starts with a table describing overall water consumption for the major metropolitan areas in Gauteng. It also details the difference between the target and actual consumption.
For example, for this week, the target for the province is exceeded by 12% and Johannesburg by 24%. This is a warning to the metro and users that consumption is too high. The targets are set by national government. Rand Water is granted an abstraction licence of 4,385-million litres per day and divides this up between the metros and other users.
Craig Sheridan
www.timeslive.co.za
