“To protect our scarce supplies of
water and to work towards a more
sustainable approach, we all need to
change our attitudes towards water and
continuously strive towards developing
ways to better conserve it. We have a
great skills base in the South African
water sector and really must put these
skills to full use in finding more efficient
solutions,” he says.
“I believe that South Africa has
some of the best legislation governing
the management of water, but it
is difficult to implement some of it
practically.”
Shepherd believes that where we
could be doing more, for instance,
is in the implementation of userbased water management forums.
This is where stakeholders within a
catchment area — who may include
industries, municipalities, communities
and government departments — coordinate their efforts for better and
cost-effective results.
Water Sewage & Effluent November/December 2016
infrastructure
Great skills base
“We continually need to
strive to a southern African
response to regional water
needs — in other words,
sharing water between
those southern African
countries that have water
to spare and those that
don’t have enough.”
technology
believes, is a result of our water being
too easily available and relatively cheap.
networking
to be involved in the development
of innovative water management
measures. The highlight of my career
was being appointed a partner at
SRK Consulting in the mid-2000s, and
being able to guide our team of water
scientists and engineers in this exciting
field.”
In regard to current projects he
is involved in, Shepherd explains that
mining and industry are currently
concentrating on minimising the
use of potable water, as well as
identifying ways to reduce seepage
— and potential pollution — from their
operations. “So our main projects
are focused on the development of
plans and strategies to reuse as much
water as possible. They also focus on
identifying ways that polluted water can
be captured before it is contaminated,”
he says.
Turning to his passion for
sustainable water resource protection,
Shepherd points out that South Africa
is a semi-arid country, yet we continue
to use water quite wastefully and often
seem unaware of the fact that we are
not using our water efficiently. This, he