Sewage leak

The report details an assessment of municipal waste water management systems, and credits well-run systems with a Green Drop Award for “excellence in achievement”.

Six provinces received a Green Drop Award, with the Western Cape leading the pack with 19 awards.

A total of 156 municipalities and 821 waste systems were assessed – in 2009 only 98 municipalities and 444 systems were assessed.

Of the 821, 40 were found to be in excellent condition, 78 were in good condition, 243 were average, and 143 performed very poorly.

It said 317 plants are in critical condition.

The picture in Eastern Cape was grim: 64% of the province’s sewerage works posedhealth and environmental risks.

“Renewed efforts must be dedicated to compel plants into medium and low-risk positions,” the report said.

None of the water-treatment plants in Limpopo won an award, indicating that the performance of the entire province was weak.

At the province’s Leyenye works, the report said, “Poor effluent quality is being discharged as a result of inadequate treatment during upgrading of the plant, presenting a significant risk to public health and the environment, given that the receiving resource is the sensitive Letaba River, which flows into the Kruger National Park.”

Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa, who presented the report, said the situation was unacceptable.

“I am concerned … that we still have, especially given the disparities of our provinces and our municipalities, a situation where some of the municipalities are still struggling to get their level of accounting on the quality of water to the extent as it is reflected in Eastern Cape, as well as in Limpopo and poorer provinces.”

She said monitoring of water-treatment systems in Eastern Cape and Limpopo would be prioritised because of the high risk they posed.

The minister also unveiled the 2011 Blue Drop Report – which looks at drinking water quality and management.

A total of 66 systems won Blue Drop Awards during the 2010-2011 assessment period for excellent compliance and standards, and for “good management practice in drinking water quality management”, among other criteria.

The top five performers were Johannesburg, Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, Witzenberg local municipality and West Coast district municipality.

Source: Times live

The latest Blue Drop Report – released by Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa on Thursday – shows an improvement in the performances of many of the 914 water systems assessed across all nine provinces.

Gaining Blue Drop certification is an indication the water supply authority has complied with a stringent set of procedural, chemical, biological and other requirements.

According to the report, a total of 914 water systems were assessed in 162 municipalities, compared to 787 systems the previous year.

A total of 536 of them (58.7%) scored more than 50% in the latest Blue Drop assessment, compared to 370 (47%) the year before.

The number of systems scoring less than 50% dropped.

This is the second consecutive year in which the sector’s performance has improved.

Overall provincial Blue Drop scores have moved from 51.4% in 2009, to 67.2% in 2010, to 72.9% in the latest report.

“The excellent performers increased from 38 Blue Drop awards in 2010, to 66 in 2011, with the Western Cape producing the highest number of Blue drop systems (29).

“The Blue Drop requirements become more stringent… with every assessment cycle. Hence, the 66 systems that achieved Blue Drop status are truly ‘excellent’, and the municipalities are congratulated for their devoted efforts,” the report states.

The Blue Drop awards will be made to the municipalities that achieved them at an awards dinner in Cape Town on Thursday evening.

Source: News 24

An expert team appointed by Cabinet to advise the inter-ministerial committee on the dangers of acid mine drainage to Gauteng warned earlier this year of the need to avert an impending crisis.

The team, drawn from the Council for Geosciences and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), among others, identified various risk categories, including the contamination of surface and ground water required for agricultural and human consumption.

Their recommendations were housed in an acid mine drainage report.

According to a statement issued by the Department of Water Affairs this week, “important progress” had been made by the state in implementing the immediate and short-term actions recommended in the acid mine drainage report.

Infrastructure

BuaNews reported that Water Affairs Minister Edna Molewa had also tasked state-owned Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority to oversee installation of pumps to extract water from the mines to onsite treatment plants and construction of an on-site mine water treatment plant in each basin.

There will also be an installation of infrastructure to convey treated water to nearby watercourses and the facilitation of the best model, which shall be proposed to the Department of Water Affairs, for the operations of the pumping stations and treatment works.

Treasury had made a budget allocation of R225m in the next three years toward the design and building of an acid mine water treatment facility, R5m of which would be spent on a five-year plan to deal with acid mine drainage.

The statement said recent “collaborative efforts” between the department and Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority had resulted in an investigation of existing mine water treatment infrastructure in the western and central basin mining areas, and of potential institutional arrangements with the mining companies that were active in these basins.

“The Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority, by way of tender protocol, appointed a professional service provider to provide an intensive appraisal of the available infrastructure and to formulate appropriate engineering options to adequately resolve the acid mine drainage problem,” said the department.

The highest priority is being given to the development of solutions to reduce, if not eradicate, the surface decant of acid mine drainage in the West Rand area.

Also of high priority was the development of measures focused on ensuring that underground mine water levels in the central basin of the mines did not reach the environmental critical level, which would pose a threat.

Source: News24

STATE-owned bulk water provider the Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority (TCTA) is to oversee a short-term project to clean up acid mine drainage on the Witwatersrand.

This clean-up comes 13 months before the noxious mix of chemicals is expected to harm the environment, TCTA confirmed yesterday.

Acid mine drainage, which is already affecting the West Rand and encroaching on the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, may flood the Gold Reef City tourist site on the Central Witwatersrand Basin and sites on the area’s Eastern Basin if work to rectify the situation does not begin soon. Nigel’s central business district and a wetland considered to be of international importance would also be affected.

TCTA spokeswoman Thandi Mapukata confirmed that the company had been issued a directive to provide a solution to the problem, but said it was waiting for the interministerial committee on acid mine drainage to make a formal announcement as it was not the TCTA’s place to do so.

Under the directive, the project must be operational by February 28 next year. This would fulfil a promise made by Planning Minister Trevor Manuel that pumping would begin a year from when Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan set aside R225 m in his February budget (in the medium- term expenditure framework) to tackle the problem.

According to tender documents, TCTA has to appoint contractors to instal pumps to extract acid mine water from mines to on-site water treatment plants. Contractors will also be required to build water treatment plants and instal infrastructure to convey treated water to nearby water courses. There is no overall cost estimate.

The Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE), a nongovernmental body that has long campaigned for action on acid mine water in Witwatersrand , is worried that the proposed short-term solution — neutralisation of the acid mine water by lime — will become a long- term solution. “Neutralisation is not a long-term solution because it doesn’t remove the salts,” its CEO, Mariette Leifferink, said.

Acid mine water may result in high levels of salts, sulphates, iron, aluminum and toxic heavy metals such as cadmium and cobalt, plus some radioactive particles.

Department of Water Affairs senior manager Marius Keet was yesterday waiting for an update from one of the remaining liquidators of Aurora Empowerment Systems , where pumping of the water ceased in February, putting Nigel and the wetland in jeopardy.

The Federation for a Sustainable Environment is also concerned that companies buying up abandoned mines that are emitting the water do not have the wherewithal to take on the environmental liabilities .

Parliament’s water affairs portfolio committee is to hear this month from the Department of Water Affairs, various mines and the Chamber of Mines on what steps have been taken to rectify the growing crisis, Democratic Alliance spokesman Gareth Morgan said.

Source: Business Day

“TAU SA also wrote to the Independent Complaints Directorate requesting feed-back of the police investigation into the matter,” said its general manager Bennie van Zyl.

The union laid the charges against Minister of Agriculture Tina Joemat-Pettersson, Mining Minister Susan Shabangu and Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica at the Brooklyn police station in Pretoria, on May 7 last year.

Its chairman Louis Meintjes said at the time that all three had repeatedly failed to address the water pollution problem.

Meintjies said Sonjica should have acted in line with the National Water Act and that Shabangu should have known that mining, water supply and food security were directly linked.

He said the Act provided that it was criminal for ministers to knowingly or unintentionally allow for natural resources to be jeopardised.

On Tuesday, Van Zyl said the case was not properly investigated and that consequently answers to all complaints submitted were expected.

“The South African authorities do not realise the gravity of the situation caused by polluted water,” he said.

Both the National Prosecuting Authority and the ICD could not immediately confirm or deny receiving the letter from the union.

Source: Times Live

Will the South African government enforce the laws surrounding a clean and safe water supply for all or will individuals need to secure a private water supply so that they can be ensured of safe drinking water?

The river – 294km long – runs through several agricultural communities and is an important element in the development of the tourism industry in areas between Franschhoek and Velddrif.

Iaan Badenhorst, manager and resident at the Berg River Resort, said debris (mainly logs) and alien vegetation were the biggest problems in the Paarl area.

“The vegetation takes oxygen out of the water and affects the ecosystem. The government needs to put money into solving the problem when it can still be solved. This river is essential to farmers.

“Their business depends on the quality of the water. If it isn’t right the EU cancels export contracts, which is a major loss to the farmer and the local economy,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Western Cape Department of Agriculture, Francis Steyn, said the river’s degraded ecosystem was not being managed correctly and would “drastically affect” human health, the rural economy and ecosystem if nothing was done.

“The problem we are addressing is caused by alien vegetation dominating the river system and replacing all the indigenous plants that make the natural system a healthy one with water of good quality.”

Steyn said the degraded system affected the entire population of the Western Cape because of the massive amount of work, food and exports produced in the river basin. He said it would cost R30m a year for the next 10 years to improve. The initial funding for the regeneration project came from the Department of Agriculture, which would soon be financially assisted by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry’s Working for Water Programme.

Since the project started, it had created more than 3 000 jobs.

A meeting was held on Friday when officials from the provincial departments of agriculture, environmental and water affairs, Eskom, Farmsecure, the Drakenstein Municipality, Disaster Management and the private sector discussed the project.

Source: IOL

The berg river is not only essential for agriculture but it is also an essential source of drinking water for the greater Cape Town area. Should the water quality in the river and the dam diminish this would also impact the water quality in the City.

Spokesperson Patrick Craven said the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) had joined other organisations in the campaign to highlight the water crisis.

Cosatu had submitted a notice setting out the problems and challenges and demanding urgent measures to resolve the crisis, he said, noting that the Federation of Unions of SA had also filed a Section 77 notice on water.

“Should there be no progress in addressing the challenges raised in this application, Cosatu will have no option but to mobilise its members for a protest which will take the form of marches, demonstrations, pickets and stayaways,” said Craven.

Section 77 of the Labour Relations Act gives workers the right to take part in protest action to promote or defend their socio-economic interests.

In terms of the Labour Relations Act, the National Economic Development and Labour Council must bring the parties to a section 77 notice together, to attempt to resolve the reasons for the contemplated protest action.

Craven said that while the number of people with access to water had increased since 1994, the quality of water available to South Africans was not acceptable.

An increasing number of water service users had serious complaints about the quality.

While in 76% of water users were satisfied with the quality in 2005 and 72% in 2007, only 58.8% were satisfied in 2009.

People complained that the water they received was “not clean, clear, good in taste or free from bad smells.

“These complaints represent the microcosm of the water challenges the country is facing: pollution, poor quality and scarcity,” said Craven.

Among other things, there was poor sanitation and water service delivery, eutrophication (excessive nutrients) in dams and rivers, failing waste water treatment infrastructure and acid mine drainage.

Craven said an enhanced exploration of ground water, which should not only be relied upon during droughts, was one of the measures that could be adopted to address the water challenge.

Other measures included desalination, rainwater harvesting, conservation and water reuse.

Cosatu had called for policies that included punitive incentives against those who waste and pollute water, especially large water users.

Source: News 24

“Economic accounting for water – EAW – is a process of systematically measuring the contribution of water to the economy as well as the impact of economic activity such as agriculture, mining, and industry on water resources through abstraction and pollution,” explains Dr Gift Manase, lead author of a just-concluded study for the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

EAW complements information in the System of National Accounts, the standard tool for economic reporting and planning. It collects and quantifies detailed data about water use to understand the value of non-marketed goods and in so doing better appreciate the true contribution of water to the economy, which is presently underestimated.

“To put it very simply, EAW helps us to better understand the trade-offs that are made when using water,” says Dr Amy Sullivan of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network who heads the Limpopo Basin Development Challenge.

The SADC Economic Accounting of Water Use project set out to establish standard methodologies, raise awareness around water accounting and build capacity for countries to set up their own water accounting systems.

The pilot was run in Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia and Zambia as well as in two river basins, the Orange-Senqu and the Maputo. It revealed several challenges to implementing EAW in the region, including collecting the wide range of data required from numerous institutions and in the case of transboundary river basins, coordinating this across national boundaries.

“EAW requires substantial data and data availability varies greatly among SADC member states,” says Manase.

Economic accounting for water produces six accounts that track quantity and quality of water, as well as its flow into the economy and back out again – including monitoring pollutants in wastewater and sewage. It presents the physical stocks and movements of water alongside the economic figures for productivity of the many sectors that use water as an input.

The picture that emerges provides a more comprehensive valuation of water’s contribution to sectors like agriculture and mining and as a consumer good in its own right in the case of domestic water supply. It also accounts for the environmental value of water, for example in the contribution wetlands make to water purification and flood control.

“Economic accounting of water combines different factors relating to water use such as hydrology, economic assessment of water resources, pollution and social distribution. It is a multidimensional system,” says Sullivan.

“It doesn’t just look at the hydrological component or the economic returns, but also takes ecological sustainability and equity into account. So it is a step up from either taking a purely hydrological, economic or ecological point of view. It is an attempt to plan and manage water resources on a basin level in the best possible way.”

“Although EAW is a critical tool for efficient and effective management of water resources,” says Manase, “it is not yet widely applied in the SADC region.”

At present, only Namibia, Botswana, Mauritius and South Africa are compiling water accounts at varying levels of detail.

More accurate assessment of the role water plays in the economy – and the effects of economic uses of water on present and future availability – will aid comparison of benefits across sectors and accurately document inefficient use. It could also help water managers make a strong case for investment in water infrastructure.

“Water accounting started as a research tool, but it is slowly moving on to be a useful tool to inform policy-making,” says Sullivan. “It is still early days, the potential of economic water accounting has not yet been reached, but as the models get more detailed and allow for elaborate scenario-testing EAW will be better suited for decision-making.”

Source: IPS

The blue-green bloom in December 2010. Locals were warned to keep their pets and visitors away from the water.

50 people including local residents, environmental organizations and volunteer groups attended.

The Wildevoelvlei wetlands form an integral part of the wetland systems in the Noordhoek Valley. Originally the vlei was seasonal and dried out over the summer months. Rainfall, groundwater seepage, stormwater run-off and spring tides regulated the water level.

In 1977, the Wildevoelvlei WWTW was commissioned and the vlei became a permanent water body due to the treated effluent being discharged into it.

Wally Peterson founder of Kommetjie Environmental Awareness Group (KEAG) who was previously involved in trying to resolve this problem gave a comprehensive history of Wildevoelvlei at the event.

He said, “WWTW was upgraded in 1996, but the development in the valley has way exceeded the expected population growth as predicted in the EIA. This placed WWTW under huge pressure through an increase of treated effluent entering the vlei, and through an increase in quantity and decrease in quality of the nonpoint stormwater run-off discharged into the vlei.”

He went on to say that in response to this crisis, a number of emergency measures were implemented including lowering the water levels by opening the mouth, and dropping salt into the vlei from helicopters as Blue-greens struggle in saline water bodies. “This was effective in the short term but toxic algae blooms have continued to occur. The most recent bloom being in December 2010 when media reports warned locals, their pets and visitors to away from the water” he says.

Prior to 1998 the vlei was relatively stable due to the presence of a population of Sago pondweed. It provided nesting material, shelter and food for a variety of birds and aquatic life. Many species of waterfowl and even large flocks of flamingoes and pelicans were regular sightings. The last resident flamingoes were here in 2002.

In 1998 some form of pollutant entered the water bodies and this led to a mass die off of all of the pondweed. This is still an unsolved mystery.

This enabled a species of blue-green algae to grow extensively. Cyanobacteria such as Microcystis proliferate in summer when conditions are favourable. These blue-greens thrive on high levels of phosphates and soon produced toxins. The vlei turned a bright green in colour and the water became toxic. The toxins produced in Wildevoelvlei entered the marine food chain and became concentrated in the mussel beds at the outlet to the sea. A ban was imposed on all mussel collecting and warning signage was erected.

“This is a great threat to members of Ocean View and Masiphumulele; two local townships that rely on this shellfish to supplement their food security and income. The children from these areas often play in the mouth, as this is the nearest beach” said Peterson.

Management options have been explored by the City of Cape Town and these include the reduction of sewage effluent, improving the quality of effluent and storm water, reducing the internal nutrient load and dilution and flushing. These options all have cost implications and nothing has been done over the last decade except for an unsuccessful attempt to re-grow pondweed.

On 13 January 1999 a year after the significant algae bloom, Bryan Davies and Anja Gassner wrote a comprehensive report to the Catchment Management section of the Cape Metropolitan Council mentioning some facts including:

“Commercial washing powders contain by weight between 15% and 30% phosphate, the substance that is at the bottom of the pollution problems recounted in this report for all the vleis of the Noordhoek Valley, and for Wildevoëlvlei in particular. This means that every kilogram box of washing powder may yield up to 300g of phosphate. Waste Water from homes contains large quantities of the material.”

“We are convinced that it is an imperative that residents of the Noordhoek Valley – indeed, the entire area under the control of the CMC – be forced, using appropriate Bye-Laws and incentives, to use grey water (water from baths, showers, hand basins and washing machines) for irrigation purposes,” said Anja Gassner.

“The tools for this purpose are already available and have a proven track record. The strategy will have a dual benefit: 1. The reduction of the phosphate loads reaching the sewerage treatment works by as much as 50%; and 2. Reduction of water demand throughout the area under the control of the CMC, thereby avoiding the need for further costly water augmentation schemes.”