water
Eddie Koch
THE construction of expensive and environmentally damaging dams – and new inter-catchment transfer schemes like the controversial Lesotho Highlands Project – could be postponed by revolutionary water- saving measures contained in municipal regulations to be introduced across the country this year.
The proposed Israeli-style regulations, some of them so dramatic they were considered an April Fool’s joke when reported this week, are part of a package designed to ensure South Africa uses water supplies efficiently and in a way that provides the poorest with a supply of potable water.
The by-laws, outlined in the proposed national water supply regulations, aim to dramatically cut the water consumed by municipal users, including mines, farmers, municipalities and citizens.
“We urgently need to change people’s behaviour from a free-and-easy approach of using as much water as they like, to one which balances consumption with availability of a scarce resource,” said Neil MacLeod, chairman of the National Water Regulations Drafting Committee.
MacLeod estimated that within 30 years the amount of water available to each person in South Africa – an arid country despite the fact that the resource here is still among the cheapest in the world – would have to be halved to about 650 litres a day.
The new and standardised regulations, designed to help meet the cuts required to achieve this, are set to become law within months. They include:
* A ban on watering gardens, sportsfields or lawns between 1am and 3pm between the months of October and March.
l A complete and nationwide ban on the use of high-pressure hoses to clean pavements and other hardened surfaces.
* An embargo on the installation of lavatory cisterns with a capacity greater than nine litres. All new toilets will be fitted with dual flushing devices so that less water can be used to flush liquids only.
* All new shower heads will have a maximum flow rate of less than 10 litres a minute. Efforts will be made to replace old shower heads and cisterns with new water-saving technologies.
* All car washes will have to be done in a way that ensures 70% of water is recycled.
Local authorities will also be required to conduct an annual water audit to establish consumption and losses to leaking pipes and illegal connections. In places like Soweto and other apartheid townships, up to 50% of water supplies are lost due to leakages.
“We’re an arid country, compared with Israel, and these regulations are the first step in a national process to conserve water. In about five years we will have to introduce stringent regulations, such as tariff hikes and compelling people to fit water-saving devices,” said MacLeod.
“In 10 years we will probably have the same regulations as Israel, where even the type of applications used in the home are regulated, and the type of plants one can grow in gardens is controlled.”
Consumers have reacted with some degree of shock, but senior officials in the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry said the real significance of the regulations lay in their potential to prevent the need for new expensive and destructive dam projects.
Results from measures adopted by the Hermanus municipality in the Western Cape showed that local consumption could be reduced by 30% in months, said Guy Preston, special adviser to Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Kader Asmal.
Half the measures contained in a 12-point water conservation plan – including informative billing that shows consumers how much they use, intensive communication with residents and an escalating tariff on a “more-you-use-more-you-pay” basis – has led to a 30% saving in the municipality in the last four months.
“This has been achieved by implementing half the proposed programme. Once the other measures are put in place, Hermanus can expect to save even more water,” said Preston.
He estimates such savings, if adopted by Cape Town, will allow the city to delay building new dams and that the total saving to the local government and its ratepayers would thus amount to some R780-million.
If local Gauteng authorities adopted similar measures – and they will be encouraged to do so by the restrictions and audit obligations contained in the proposed regulations – the savings in terms of dam construction costs would run to billions of rands.
Department officials were reluctant to speculate yet about the possibility that the new measures would reduce the need for Gauteng to draw water from the Lesotho Highlands Project.
But the success of Asmal’s conservation campaign – described by American experts recently as “unprecedented in terms of approach and effectiveness” – has raised questions about the future of conventional engineering approaches to water shortage in South Africa.