Water is life and life is water, without water we will live but a week, maybe less. Yet, we treat this resource with such disdain, as long as we turn the tap on and water comes out, we don’t see a problem.
Ekurhuleni has 400 lakes and dams all polluted to some degree or other. Getting to understand the problem I have called on a number of businesses and seen firsthand how poorly the resource is managed.
For example, restaurants, hotels or catering companies have grease traps which are installed to ensure excess grease and fats don’t land up in the water reticulation system.
How do some of these businesses clean these traps? Well firstly, by scraping the excess fat and grease, placing it in a refuse bag and chucking it on the municipal dump, somebody else’s problem.
Sadly, its legal too, in consultation with the health department.
As for cleaning the grease trap, well anything from caustic soda, to degreasers and worse are poured into the traps and thus into the drains that land up in our water reticulation systems.
Poor planning and the lack of maintenance has led to our water reticulation plants falling into disrepair, what this means is that the effluent simply runs out into our water courses and rivers at tremendous cost to our environment and ourselves.
Such water needs to be recovered and purified for us to consume, yet the cost of recovering that water has increased. Therefore, more internationally banned chemicals, lime and chlorine get dumped into the water to recover it and a worsening quality of water is delivered to us to consume.
There are solutions, but there are also corrupt politicians and individuals in the way of delivering the solution. These people rather seek to feather there own nests than to understand the implication of their actions for not implementing the solutions at hand.
There are also businesses that seek to ensure profit over implementing solutions which would add to the longevity of the water resource.
What are we doing as individuals when it comes to water and the water resource? Wars are going to be fought over water because for years we have abused this resource mistakenly thinking we have abundant water supply.
The sad reality is we don’t, unless we look to the available solutions.
The reality is unless we put our water resource future over profit and greed, the taps are going to run dry.
The Chamber of Commerce is looking for companies that offer solutions, all you need to do is call us.
Contact him on 082 886 0651.
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