1. Educate to change consumption and lifestyles
In the end, changing the face of this crisis involves education to motivate new behaviors. Coping with the coming era of water scarcity will require major overhaul of all forms of consumption, from individual use to corporates. Some regions led by India, Australia and the Southwest U.S., are already facing the freshwater crisis. The most critical task is making sure the problem is much better understood worldwide.

2. Invent new water conservation technologies
In areas where aquifers are drying up and rainwater is increasingly unpredictable, innovation is needed. But as we attempt to cope with freshwater scarcity and develop conservation technologies, energy consumption is an important consideration.

3. Recycle wastewater (Greywater recycling)
In March, World Water Day panelists urged a new mindset for wastewater treatment. Some countries, like Singapore, are trying to recycle to cut water imports and become more self-sufficient. The rich East Asian republic is a leader in developing advanced technology that cleanses wastewater for other uses, including drinking.

4. Improve irrigation and agricultural practices
Some 70 percent of the world’s freshwater is used for agriculture. Improving irrigation can help close supply and demand gaps. In certain cases profligate irrigation practices meant for an earlier era has weakened the ability of farmers to provide food and fiber to a growing world.

5. Appropriately price water
Water pricing and rights go hand in hand, with consumers questioning the benefit of higher prices. According to experts from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international economic forum of 31 of the world’s richest countries, raising prices will help lower waste and pollution.

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Acid mine drainage is a global phenomena and is in not way unique to the Johannesburg area. Both department, mining and water affairs have been aware of the potential issues for many years but have chosen to do as little as possible about the situation, just enough to keep it away from public attention.

This is a public water crisis.

The following extract form the Sowentan

THE Department of Mining has no plan to stop acid mine water in the country’s 5901 abandoned mines from causing a national disaster.

Director-general Sandile Nogxina told Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) yesterday: “We don’t have a long-term plan on how we are going to do that. The plan we have covers this financial year.”

Nogxina came in for a bashing from all political parties, who accused him of ignoring the “crisis”.

ANC MP Roy Ainslie said: “You do not appreciate the extent of the environmental crisis we face with regard to these abandoned mines. If you have rehabilitated only five mines over the past three years, that is 1,5 mines a year. At this rate, it would take about 3000 years to rehabilitate all these mines.”

Scopa chairperson Themba Godi said if the mines were not rehabilitated, everything else the government did would be “pointless”.

“Building RDP houses, building hospitals and schools for communities will be wasted expenditure if those areas are going to become difficult to live in. It is a life and death problem,” Godi said.

The water in abandoned mines is said to be rising every day. The water mixes with the minerals and rock that have been exposed by mining and pollutes the water table. As more rain falls, the acid water overflows on to the streets.

Sowetan reported in July that the acid mine drainage problem in Johannesburg was so huge that the city would have to spend R220million on new pump stations. These will pump the acid mine water away and prevent it from flooding the city.

Democratic Alliance MP Mark Steele demanded that Nogxina be held accountable for not coming up with a plan.

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The municipality of Cape Town might not be faced with a similar situation this summer but if history is anything to go by then summer 2011/2012 could slam water outages on the Mother City. One never know but it is only hind sight that is the perfect science.

I don’t have the nerve to wait till the dam levels start dropping and rainfall pattern decrease before investing in a water conservation our water augmentation system. I really like the luxury of a running tap.

This extract from The Weekend post.

MOSSEL Bay, already under the whip as the prolonged drought in the town threatens the water supply to the PetroSA gas to liquids refinery, is facing more bad news following a new calibration of the Wolwedans Dam level.

The Water Affairs Department, the dam’s owner, says the level is in fact 16.62%, and not the 18.5% initially calibrated.

Although 34mm of rain had fallen in the dam’s catchment area last week, the municipality said it had not been enough to make a significant difference.

If the dam level drops to the 10% mark or below, PetroSA will not be allowed to extract water for its refinery, which means it might have to shut down.

Based on the latest calibration, Mossel Bay has 20 days’ less water than previously thought, but this excludes the 200Ml of water below the gauge plate of the dam, which could be purified to a quality suitable for human consumption.

“This was obviously disappointing news and puts the municipality under even more pressure in an already difficult situation.

“More than 100000 people who live in the urban areas and are dependent on the municipality for their water face the risk of being without water altogether if the dams should run dry,” the town manager said.

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You follow conventional wisdom, but you just don’t get the results promised. You mulch this and fertilize that, yet your garden doesn’t thrive. It’s enough to make you want to hang up your hoe.

Well friend, you may be victim of garden myth.

As an avid gardener, I’ve tested many common theories of gardening, and I’ve discovered that quite a bit of that gardening wisdom isn’t so wise.

It’s easy to understand how those tried-and-true gardenisms have acquired their accepted status. The need to condense experience and information in our expanding gardening world has led to an oversimplification of complex gardening experiences.

Add to this the ever changing world of gardening and the influence of marketing that inevitably sways gardeners’ habits, and it’s no wonder we’re confused.

Here are the top 7 well 8 myths that may be keeping your garden from becoming the pride of the neighborhood.

• Reading is believing

Myth: The information found in gardening books or on a plant container’s label is the final word on this plant’s care.

Fact: Two words — micro climates. Not only is the general information on plant care applied across the entire spectrum of zones it can be grown in, lumping high veld with coastal, but it also can’t distinguish between the staggering diversity of micro climates contained within even one city.

Resolution: Talk to your local nursery professional or ask your neighbors what experiences they’ve had with a particular plant or category of plants.

• Greywater irrigation stinks

Myth: Recycled water smells and in bad for plants

Fact: Recycled household water contains low amounts of nutrients, this low dose of nutrients and absorbed into the soil daily and will allow you to fertilize less often. Greywater might never replace the need to fertilizer however.
Using greywater to irrigate your garden does not add unbecoming odours to the outdoors, easy maintenance prevents any occurrence of malodours.

Greywater naturally contain low levels of soaps that keep the bugs away. This point leads me to the next myth.

Resolution: Stop wasting clean drinking water on your plants, they thrive in the dirt. Is the water you were splashing around in the bath not good enough for your lawn? Go green and start recycling your wash water.

• A bug is a bug

Myth: Aphids are a pest you should always get rid of.

Fact: Recent thinking is improving the lowly aphid’s standing. Aphids attract beneficial predators to your garden, where they eat not only the aphids but other harmful bugs. Think of aphids as benign appetizers to draw these beneficial “hunting” insects to your garden.

Resolution: Hose off excess aphids or use a mild soap solution to wipe off an infestation, but don’t aim for an aphid-free garden.

• Indigenous, Indigenous, Indigenous

Myth: Conscientious gardeners plant only indigenous.

Fact: Gardeners frequently ask for indigenous plants, believing they must plant only indigenous plants to have a drought-resistant and responsible garden.

The list of such plants available in the trade is a short one. However, there are non-natives, called Bay friendly plants, that offer the same virtues — they are noninvasive, drought tolerant, and hardy. The list of these plants includes a much wider range of offerings.

Resolution: Grow plants that are well suited to the area you live in. Plants that would be able to thrive with minimal irrigation. Cape Town is blessed with a wide variety of local plants that are will suited to our climate.

Photo magic

Myth: Our gardens can look like the photos in garden magazines.

Fact: Umm, no. Those gardens looked great on the day the photos were shot and not for much longer. That’s OK. Gardens are in constant change, and we should embrace the inherent wildness of nature.

Nobody seems to read “Your results may vary” on the bottom of the page.

Resolution: Use the pictures as inspiration, then create your own vision. Enjoy the journey. You’ll get the occasional picture-perfect moment and then it will change and grow into a different photo op.

Stronger is better

Myth: A more potent fertilizer is a better fertilizer.

Fact: This is a particularly pernicious fallacy. Chemical fertilizers and generally any product with a percentage above 10-10-10, are bad for the environment. But they’re not great for the long term health of plants, either.

Plants may respond to the potency of the mix, blooming more quickly and fully, but in the long term, these chemicals will leave the plant depleted. It’s been compared to a sugar rush: immediate euphoria then a crash.

Resolution: Use widely available organic or nonchemical fertilizers, which also have the benefit of being slow-release formulations.

Who needs it?

Myth: I don’t need to fertilize my plants if they look healthy.

Fact: All plants need nutrients on a regular basis. Unless you’re growing vegetables, where you can add soil amendments at the beginning of each planting year, you’ll need to top dress or add fertilizer of some kind to feed your plants.

This is especially true for heavy feeders, such as fruit-bearing shrubs and trees, and potted pots that have a limited volume of soil and thus a limited amount of nutrients.

Resolution: As a general rule, fertilize your plants four times a year. An all purpose blend will be fine, though there are mixes for acid-loving plants and for citrus and fruit trees. If your plants are having trouble flowering, try a 0-10-10 blend.

Eternally yours

Myth: Plants live forever.

Fact: It’s understandable that we all get attached to plants in our garden, and even develop relationships with them. But even with our best efforts, plants have a natural limit to their life span.

Sometimes people are relieved to be informed that they’ve done nothing wrong, that a plant has just reached its natural end. Even us humans don’t live for ever.

Resolution: In a wider sense, sometimes it’s better to replace a sickly plant than keep it on life support. Remove long suffering plants, or plants that no longer fit that location’s needs, and start fresh. This replacing can even be invigorating.

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The SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) threatened on Friday to create a “serious water crisis”, saying their members in the water sector would go on strike on Monday.

Samwu national spokesman Tahir Sema said the employer organisation, the South African Association of Water Utilities (Saawu), has offered the unions a nine percent wage increase, while they wanted between 11 and 13.5 percent.

“We rejected the nine percent offer and will go on strike on Monday, which means that the water supply throughout the country will be affected.”

He said about 50,000 workers, from administrators to mechanics and technicians, would strike.

Sema could, however, not give an indication to what extent the industrial action would affect water supply to consumers.

“The water supply will be affected, but we can’t say to which degree. That will only be assessed once the strike starts.”

Distribution of water to municipalities would be affected.

“If water workers strike, the tap is closed.”

Sema advised the government, through Saawu, to return to the negotiating table and “negotiate a proper increase in good faith”.

“We advise them to concede to workers’ demands, which are both legitimate and reasonable.”

Sema said union members were also upset because managers had received “hefty salary hikes”, while ordinary workers have not had an increase at all in more than a year.

Saawu represents 18 water boards. It could not immediately be reached for comment.

Source Times Live

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It has not only been 6 months that the Department of Water Affairs has been aware of the potential hazards of the Acid Mine Drainage but it has also allowed many mines to operate without water licenses. This has undoubtedly added to the water crisis.

The following extracts from TimesLive:

SA's biggest environmental disaster

“If nothing is done, water will start decanting [from the so-called central basin, under the city] and contaminating groundwater in 17 months,” senior water affairs official Marius Keet told members of Parliament’s land and environmental affairs select committee on Tuesday.

“According to the information available, 13-months lead time is required for this. So if government… decides now to do something, in 13 months you can have a pump station,” Keet said.

This means, starting immediately, government has a four-month window in which to take action.

Earlier, he told members the water level on August 13 in the basin below Johannesburg was 558 metres below the surface.

“The current rate of rise is 0.35 metres a day, but it can go up to 0.9 metres a day in summer.” (Rainfall months)

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Have you tried out every trick in the book to lose weight – crash diets, gyms, or simply starving yourself? Now, try a simple trick – drink a glass or two of water before meals, as that’s the best way to curb appetite and shed those pounds – says a new research.

Scientists have reported that just two 250 ml glasses of water taken before meals, can lead to weight loss.

“In this recent study, we found that over the course of 12 weeks, dieters who drank water before meals, three times per day, lost about 2.5 kg more than dieters who did not increase their water intake,” said Brenda Davy of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

The simple reason is that it fills up the stomach with a substance that has zero calories. People feel fuller as a result, and eat less calorie-containing food during the meal.

And it gets even better if you replace sweetened calorie-containing beverages with it.

Although there’s no exact amount of water one should drink, experts advise that most healthy people can simply let thirst be their guide.

Source: DNA

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