struggling to carry buckets up the road while neighbours happily irrigate their lawns with borehole water . At the very thought of this scenario , government did what governments do : they issued new regulations . As from 12 January 2018 , the national Department of Water , supported by the city authorities , requires all urban boreholes to be licensed and metered . Even as those regulations were issued , many commentators were saying that they would be impossible to enforce . That is certainly the global experience . All over the world , the use of groundwater in urban areas has proven difficult to control . Places like Mexico City and Jakarta have seen massive subsidence as a result of groundwater overuse . In India ’ s capital , New Delhi , there was a race to the bottom : so many boreholes were dug that water levels fell dramatically ,
and many ran dry — there was just no water left to pump . Meanwhile , cities like London ran into trouble when people stopped using groundwater and levels rose , threatening to flood building basements and underground railway structures . Because the problems in London were focused on its commercial centre , they could organise a coordinated programme to stabilise water levels . But in other cities , where there are tens of thousands of boreholes , it has proven impossible even to identify where they are , let alone control how much they pump . Even if the authorities know where the boreholes are , how can they regulate their use ? South Africa ’ s new regulations require all borehole owners to “ install electronic water recording , monitoring or measuring devices to enable monitoring of abstractions , storage and use of water by existing lawful users and establish links with any monitoring or management system .” But there are no standards for borehole meters and , even if there were , there are no procedures for reading them . I suspect that few borehole owners responded to the requirement to submit meter readings every Monday by 12:00 . For now , the city council has asked residents to register their boreholes and warned them that “ The use of borehole water for outdoor purposes is discouraged in order to preserve groundwater resources .” National Government then turned their attention to people who wanted to sell water from their boreholes to neighbours , warning that “ If a private borehole is to be commercialised , a requisite licence needs be applied for .” Their concern is obvious . It is more difficult to persuade people to save water if their neighbours are not restricted . If some people are watering gardens and selling water at their gates , it will create the impression that more than enough is available . However , rather than government trying to regulate the solution , they need to encourage a more positive approach . Explain that gardens should not be irrigated because no one knows how much groundwater there is — so conserve it as far as possible until the crisis has passed . Similarly , people should not take advantage of the drought to exploit their neighbours by selling water ( which is a public resource ). Rather they should be encouraged to share it , to relieve pressure on the overall system . This is perhaps the most important lesson . Water is a common public resource and needs to be looked after accordingly . Environmentalists used to warn about ‘ the tragedy of the commons ’: everyone will take as much as they can of common resources until it runs out . Yet , in many societies , this is not true . Long-running research projects have shown that forests , grazing , and shared water resources are often carefully managed — not by governments but by neighbours , looking over each other ’ s shoulders to ensure that they are doing the right thing . Just because an individual lives next to a river or has a borehole does not mean that they can take as much as they want , if that prejudices the wider public . People need to be encouraged to act accordingly — and social pressure rather than formal regulation is probably the best way to do that . That spirit of collective action for common good is what needs to be encouraged in South Africa today , and Cape Town ’ s crisis may just help to show us that it really is possible . u innovations industry debate environment infrastructure municipalities
About the author
Mike Muller has managed a waterworks and rehabilitated a city ’ s sewage system . As DG of DWAF ( 1997 – 2005 ), he also established the existing regulatory system for water and sanitation services . He is currently a visiting professor at the Wits School of Governance and undertakes advisory work out of the country .
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