Water, Sewage & Effluent November December 2018 | Page 37

Water Sewage & Effluent November/December 2018
innovations
historically dependent on one
single water source type, namely
surface dams fed by run-off. Even
if this means a series of dams like
Cape Town or a complex system
of water transfers like Gauteng,
such cities still depend on one
type of supply and that is rainfall.
Therefore, our water provision
remains extremely vulnerable.
So, when droughts ‘sneak up’,
there will be problems, and as
the hunger stones predict, a fair
amount of hardship and weeping.
The lesson from other parts
of the world, and now also from
Cape Town, is that any city or area
must plan and manage a portfolio
of water sources. That means
investing in a more diversified
water supply such as underground
sources, desalination, and water
re-use. Water planners need to look
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an inscription dating back to 1616,
which reads: “Wenn du mich sieht,
dann weine” (if you see me, then
weep). A fellow hunger stone in
Germany commemorates numerous
droughts going even further back in
history, and the message is no less
dire: “If you again see this stone,
so you will cry; so shallow was the
water in the year 1417.”
Fortunately, the human race
has been able to reduce hunger
through scientific and engineering
developments over the past
centuries. But, despite water
being stored in dams and having
sophisticated
water
supply
systems, we are still vulnerable
to droughts as the past few years
have acutely proven. South African
towns and metropolitan areas
such as Cape Town and Nelson
Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth) are
I
n an interesting opinion piece
by Terry Mackenzie-Hoy in
Engineering News, debating
climate change (and without
participating in that dispute here),
I refer only to his mentioning of the
inscribed boulders in the Czech
Republic, known as Hunger Stones.
Hunger Stones’ historical messages
would normally remain hidden
below the water line of the Elbe
River. However, as the water level
dropped due to a severe Central
European drought, the sinister rocks
and the words inscribed on them
have been exposed once again.
These boulders typically have a
date that recorded when the water
of the river was at that particular
level, and sometimes an inscription
was added. The oldest and most
famous of these landmarks, simply
known as Hunger Rock, contains