About seven billion litres of sewage are released every day into rivers and dams. (Andy Mkosi)
South Africa is a water-scarce country that continues to see the valuable resource flushed into its rivers, streams and oceans, according to Johann Lubbe, the head of the country’s first Water Partnership Office (WPO).
While the country is facing a projected 17% water deficit by 2030, it has not adopted large-scale projects and programmes for water reuse, and specifically effluent (liquid waste or sewage) reuse, in its municipalities, he said.
Lubbe was appointed last month to run the WPO, which is a programme of the department of water and sanitation to support municipalities in entering into public-private partnerships for water services.
The WPO was established to deliver the National Water Programme, seeking to accelerate water and sanitation infrastructure delivery across South Africa, with the Development Bank of Southern Africa as the mandated implementing partner.
“The wastewater treatment works are not in a good state and we know what’s happening with these plants,” he said. “But the reuse opportunity is very real because we’re losing so much water down our rivers and into the ocean and there’s an opportunity to extract maximum value from the resource.
“This is not only the water component but also the ability to generate energy [from wastewater] and the ability to beneficiate the sludge. All these represent business opportunities, which can be used to assist in financing those projects.”
Given its water constraints, he said South Africa has to maximise that value extraction and no longer view wastewater as a wasted resource.
“We often talk about a wastewater treatment plant and the assumption then is that there’s no value in that resource, but there’s extreme value and that’s what we need to try and extract through the water reuse programme.”
The WPO manages several priority programmes including water conservation and demand management — in particular reducing non-revenue water — water reuse, wastewater treatment improvement and seawater desalination.
Each may have different ways in which the WPO will engage the private sector, Lubbe explained.
“In the desalination programme, we are thinking about an independent water producer concept, which will involve going out and asking the private sector to submit bids on a bid round similar to the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPP), but it’s still at an early stage,” he said.
“On the water reuse programme, those projects will probably be done on a public-private partnership basis but we’ve received some funding from the Green Climate Fund. We’ll see what works best, what is suitable, what we can do, how we structure these engagements, prepare projects and get the private sector involved.”
Lubbe said that the WPO is providing a framework from which they will prepare projects and that can then be hopefully funded by the private sector.
Historically, there are very few formal public-private partnerships that go through the treasury process and follow a formal public-private-partnership framework process in the water sector.
“There’s two or maybe four of those projects in the formal water sector and they were all 20 or 25 years ago. Since then, we haven’t really seen those formal partnerships.
“The treasury is busy revising the triple p [public-private partnership] regulations … so hopefully we will see more triple ps in the water sector and that’s where the WPO is setting up to play an important role.”
The government cannot tackle the problems plaguing the water sector alone and has to get the private sector involved. “The private sector is there, they’re willing, they’re looking for projects and looking for investment opportunities.
“We know the need is there so we have to create the structures and opportunities to get the private sector funding and expertise into projects. That’s really where the WPO will play a role, facilitating those engagements and those partnerships and structuring those projects so the private sector can come in.”
The WPO has been partially modelled on the Independent Power Producers Office, he said.
“We looked at the REIPPP programme and said what are some of the successes from that programme and how can we replicate that in the water sector.”
While water and energy are very different, “we felt the IPP office is acting like a centre of excellence so we said let’s do that in the water sector as well”, he said.
“There’s a huge benefit in having a standardised approach that can have different options available but within a set framework. That will make it easier, quicker and cheaper to get the projects ready and to engage with the private sector because you’re not starting from scratch every time.”