Our drinking water still excellent
Luckily for residents of the Merafong City Local Municipality our drinking water is still some of the best in the country and the municipality received Blue Drop Status for its quality.
Our municipality scored 93,22 per cent in the Department of Water and Sanitation’s Blue Drop report that was issued during the past week.
This is an improvement from previous years, with its lowest score being that of 84.46 per cent in 2014.
A large part of Merafong’s excellent drinking water stems from the fact that the municipality gets its bulk water from Rand Water, which already cleans it according to SANS 241 requirements even before it gets into our pipes. Merafong must, however, also look after its own infrastructure to maintain the drinking water quality.
Merafong’s bulk water comes from Rand Water’s Vereeniging and Zuikerbosch water purification pants and is distributed by the municipality via the Carletonville, Fochville and Wedela water pipe systems. Our municipality does not have its own treatment plants.
The condition of Rand Water’s water was checked for microbiological, chemical health and risk defined compliance. All the scores ranged between 99.59 to 100 per cent.
The report noted that our municipality “takes their custodial role of distributing the water seriously, ensuring that the quality is maintained through the distribution system with meticulous institutional monitoring, with the necessary risk management systems in place”. The municipality also has a Water Safety Plan, an incident management protocol and various other necessary measures to keep supplying excellent drinking water in place.
The report, however, recommended system-specific and ring-fenced budgeting for the water section.
Mogale City (the Krugersdorp area) had the lowest score in Gauteng of 93.1 per cent.
