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HEALTH AND SANITATION
Doing the right thing to keep
taps flowing in a dry season
By Mike Muller
It was another hot, dry start to the summer and, predictably, the
newspapers and radio stations (and living rooms and backyards)
were full of conversations and complaints about water.
Mike Muller is a
professional civil engineer
and a visiting Professor
at the Wits School of
Governance. Now out of
government, he raises
issues that his former
colleagues can’t and tries
to help the politicians to
help the technicians to do
their jobs.
Now water shortages at the beginning of summer
are nothing new in inland areas of South Africa. As
a government official, I could always predict that
there would be a couple of delegations coming to
Pretoria over that time, to protest about their
dry taps.
The reason was simple. As the weather heats up at the
start of the summer, people start using more water. And
when they use more water, weaknesses in systems that
are undersize or, more often, not properly managed, begin
to show.
It is the water engineers’ equivalent of that old story from
the coast: it’s only when the tide goes out that you see
who’s swimming without a cozzie.
So, on the subject of management, if I had to commission
a new pump set in Kimberley, I wouldn’t choose the hottest
time of the year to do it, as the Sol Plaatjie municipality
did. You know there will be problems and those problems
will just be worse if people are draining the system. That’s
one reason that the city spent a week without water at the
beginning of October.
In Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth we’ve known for
years that they have to expand their treatment plants and
pipelines so it’s hardly surprising that they are now rushing
to finish what should have long since been in place.
Likewise, in many small towns and villages, we know that
critical borehole pumps haven’t been replaced and that if
you try to make up by taking twice as much water from the
boreholes that remain, you will likely dry them up and burn
out yet another pump.
Nature does pose challenges!
As dams drop, you have to start cutting down on water
use. It’s no use waiting until the dam is empty before
you implement restrictions which is what seems to have
happened in places like Graaff Reinet.
Given all this drama, we always forget that there are places
where things are working. Sometimes, that’s a matter of
luck – the rains came, and the pumps kept working. But in
other places, it’s because the people concerned are doing
the job properly.
So, kudos to Rand Water Board, who chose mid-winter to
replace the big butterfly valve on one of their main lines –
and finished the work within the planned time and without
any major inconvenience to the millions of water users who
depend on them.
And, as a resident of Johannesburg, I am celebrating the fact
that the city has water restrictions in place, even though the
Department of Water and Sanitation says there is enough
water in the Vaal River System on which we all depend to
allow us to carry on without restrictions.
Yes, you read that right. The big system has enough water
– but only if the users don’t take more than their allocation
from the dams and rivers. And Rand Water is enforcing their
restrictions on the municipalities. So, Johannesburg has to
keep its consumption down. If everyone does that, there will
be enough water to go around. It’s easy really! PA
“So, Johannesburg has to keep its consumption down.
If everyone does that, there will be enough water to
go around.”
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January 2020 Volume 25 I Number 11