ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
•
Socio-economic: The demand of a growing population
exceeds the capabilities and capacity of infrastructure,
such as reservoirs and distribution networks.
Droughts are seldom caused by a single factor and are
usually the result of a combination of factors. For example,
a hydrological drought may be caused by climatic changes
in a catchment area far away from where the effects of the
drought are felt. Climatic changes coupled to an increase
in population without upscaling the capacity of reservoirs
and infrastructure can cause severe droughts.
In the Western Cape, there has been a population
boom from roughly 2.4-million people in 1995, to some
4.3-million people in 2018. This alone, even without the
climatic and infrastructure issues, could place extreme
pressure on water reserves.
So, the important question is: is there enough water
on Earth?
Water cannot be created or destroyed, so the water that
we have on our planet is billions of years old and there’s
more than enough of it. About 70% of the Earth’s surface
is covered by water, not to mention the water vapour
suspended in the atmosphere. The problem, though, is that
www.plumbingafrica.co.za
very little of this water is ‘clean water’; only about 2.5% is
considered `clean’, of which about half is inaccessible.
The challenge is getting this ‘clean water’ from sources,
such as catchment areas, lakes, and rivers, to the densely
populated human nests. The other challenge is to prevent
these sources from becoming contaminated or polluted
by chemicals, toxic discharge from factories, fertilisers,
sewage from unmaintained sewage processing plants
or informal settlements, and all sorts of debris and
unthinkable substances, as it winds its way to catchment
dams and reservoirs located close to the nests.
27
It is all about
changing habits
and altering
our selfish
expectations.
The next challenge is for water supply authorities to clean
up this water to a state that is fit for distribution to the
consumer in a potable form. This comes at astronomical
costs to taxpayers and governments.
Figures given by the World Health Organisation show that
about 4.3-million people die annually due to waterborne
diseases like cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, and dysentery.
WE’D BETTER CLEAN UP OUR ACT
Human beings are creatures of habit and sometimes very
selfish, egocentric and, in some cases, very greedy too.
It goes something like this: “Nobody is going to tell me
Continued on page 29 >>
June 2018 Volume 24 I Number 4