The State of South Africa’s Water & Sanitation with Solutions & Hope

The great pandemic has disrupted the world and highlighted the global weaknesses of our modern society that is transitioning well into the Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR). In SA, one of the greatest weaknesses is an outdated and floundering water and sanitation infrastructure with a stated backlog of R900bn by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS). 
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

We recently witnessed a scurry of water tanks being delivered to unserviced areas with great hope for these communities where many still today await the water. The intention to assist the marginalised so that they can wash adequately to stay clear of the virus was clearly well meant, that it failed dismally was also predictable as piped water is the only effective means of widespread distribution and cannot implemented overnight.

The many millions without water borne sanitation, mostly the same as those without piped water, however have no dignity or protection from disease with no quick tank style fix available. So the entire program fails to deliver as it has for two decades. The increasing levels of poverty due to failed economic policies make the available fiscus far from adequate to ever catch up. Actually the gap in water and sanitation service delivery has increased in the last decade and now we have the R900bn backlog which is national government’s number, not mine.

In a country where 41% of SA’s water delivered to consumers is classified as non revenue water (NRV), most of it (some 37%) is lost in leaking infrastructure. The backlog is made of the following three themes 

Reduce 

There is a global agenda to reduce NRV down to manageable levels, what are those levels? Tokyo is at less than 2%, Cape Town pre-drought less than 15% and many European cities between 20% to 25%. A practical target for SA in my opinion would be 15% as this was achieved in Cape Town over a decade ago, the technology and implementation approaches have improved since. As a nation agriculture uses 60% of the water resources, industry 10% and cities and towns the balance of 30%. It is in this 30% that 41% is NRV, so 12% of the total water resource is lost after expensive capture, storage, transmission, treatment and distribution. The relatively high cost of water in SA Unicities is largely due to these supply chain inefficiencies that the consumer pays for, this is not a good way of trying to attract fixed capital investments required to boost economic activity and industrialisation in general.

Reuse

The reuse of water in what is termed as indirect reuse has been practiced in SA for over a century, this was inevitable in a country with limited inland water resources. However there is great potential to reuse directly which means that we are not adopting a truly circular approach and sticking to the dated linear take, make and disposal of the resource. With direct reuse there is no additional transmission and distribution infrastructure of this water being required making this parallel priority a real low hanging affordable option where the technology is mature with the initial development and implementation of it being in SA for over fifty years already.

 Augment 

SA is drying out and so inland sources of new water from rainfall are not feasible with existing dam storage facing increased evaporative losses, this means that we have to tap into the greater water cycle and this we can do along the coastal regions. Despite SA’s pedigree in desalination technology, we still have an aversion to this natural process where global prices are now reaching parity with traditional surface and ground water resources. There are many technological developments taking place that will see continued dropping of desalination costs, largely driven by renewable energy and improvements in membranes.

The momentum of the water and sanitation sector has been seriously affected due to the lack of maintenance and provision of new infrastructure for at least two decades. This negative effect has cascaded right down to the municipal level where their statutory obligation is to provide water services but unable to for dozens of municipalities. The institutional capacity at local, provincial and national government has been decimated to an extent that these spheres of government are largely unable to contract for new infrastructure. This is catastrophic for SA as the economy is largely driven at a municipal level except maybe for agriculture.

What this means for SA is that we are water insecure and unable to reindustrialise and attract capital investments due to the inability to guarantee water supplies sustainably. The net effect is a constant contraction of the economy and increased poverty in what is an unavoidable death spiral.

WHERE ARE WE?

We are as a country are at a crossroads where not only our constrained energy infrastructure is causing economic stagnation but our water insecurity adding to the disinvestment drive. We have not had a valid master plan for the sector for a decade and have managed to have it published late 2019 meaning that with a published strategy, that can also be used to guide policy where we are able to start the implementation of our water security. What we do not have are adequate fiscal allocations and capacity on the government side to implement. However the private sector has stepped up to the challenge and is engaging to facilitate unlocking the conundrum in a supportive role.

The usefulness of sewage has been brought to the fore in the pandemic as we are now able to use the sewage as a barometer of Covid-19’s levels in society. The private sector, after the SA Water Chamber had secured the rights to the approach from the Dutch KWR Water Research Institute, has managed to successfully demonstrate the approach in SA whilst fully funded by the private sector. What this means is that we can revive the relevance of sewage as a resource and not a dead cost in our economy. Sewage has energy, water and chemicals embedded where technology is available to economically extract whilst acting as a health barometer of the population it serves. This bodes well for the sector and also demonstrates the private sector’s ability to invest and support in water and sanitation infrastructure using leading edge technology. The conversion of sewage to a resource wil not only remove serious costs to municipalities, its will ensure that the current non compliant discharges comply and add much needed employment and GDP ot the economy.

We as a country also have leading edge research institutions that are not able to realise their true strategic importance due to insufficient momentum in the sector due to the R900bn backlog in simple terms. We for example are leaders in direct sewage reuse and MLD (Minimal Liquid Discharge) and ZLD (Zero Liquid Discharge) from desalination activities in the AMD (Acid Mine Drainage) and can improve on these key technologies at a research and development level so that SA can not only implement these approaches on a large scale locally but also export these innovations in what would be a massive industrialisation drive with many positive economic spin offs. This edge we have is being eroded by natural global developments and has a diminishing window of opportunity. Time is of the essence.

WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS GOING FORWARD?
A group of private sector water stakeholders, now known as the SA Water Chamber, decided to support government through the PPGI, Public Private Growth Initiative, as this was the first available vehicle for the private sector to engage constructively with the public sector in over a decade. This engagement is allowing implementation approaches to be explored, tested and hopefully implemented on a large scale. What the private sector has to offer in a nutshell is:

• Support to the Public Private Growth initiative with over twenty sectors active where water is cross cutting like energy and hence a fundamental economic enabler
• Unlocking private sector opportunities
• Building bridges on water technology and knowledge
• Working together to broaden minds of decision makers in Government and the Private sector that also serves to improve political will and implementation speed
• Skills base, finance and capacity
• Create new opportunities
• Develop bankable models where water is the enabler

The three overriding themes to unlock the private sector engagement are:

1. Policy certainty-the Water and Sanitation Master Plan is a firm step towards clearer and appropriate policy development, however little demonstrable implementation momentum since
2. Contracting certainty-the SPV, Special Purpose Vehicle, approach is a mechanism to mitigate uncertainty and is embraced by government as one of the options but not implemented yet
3. Regulatory certainty-the implementation of an IWR, Independent Water Regulator, has been well received by most of the sectoral stakeholders with the next steps awaited

CONCLUSION

The water and sanitation landscape in South Africa is very clearly in a crisis of pandemic proportions with the private sector mobilised to support government in transitioning urgently to a path of rapid infrastructure implementation. The complications in a three tiered government architecture, decimated local government institutional capacity, a strained fiscus and collapsed governance all round are significant and can only be resolved through public private collaboration which the South African Water Chamber is designed to do with the support of the sector and peripheral stakeholders. There should be hope!

This Hardhat Opinion was sent to us by Benoit Le Roy, do you agree with him? Or you want to share your own Hardhat Opinion about any Construction or Built Environment related matter do not hesitate to send it to us here

ABOUT  BENOIT LE ROY

Benoît has in excess of thirty five years of environmental engineering experience concentrating on the Water, Waste Water and Waste fields serving all tiers of government, mining, utilities, SOE’s, automotive, Food & Beverage, Iron & Steel industries.

He has been developing and integrating environmental solutions internationally using appropriate technologies via advisory services and the supply &/or co-ordination of specialized technologies. He has also presented training for the water and waste water disciplines to provincial and local government via the Centre for Environmental Management at North West University and various presentations on Water and Waste Water (concentrating on Capacity Building) for the Institute of Municipal Engineers of SA.