Mbombela boast of providing clean drinking water
In its assessment by the water and sanitation department for the 2014 Blue Drop report, the municipality retained its Blue Drop status by scoring 88,8 per cent with four of its systems attaining Blue Drop certification
MBOMBELA – The Department of Water and Sanitation, Mpumalanga Provincial Operations has congratulated Mbombela Local Municipality on its relentless efforts to ensure that communities in the area enjoy good-quality drinking water.
“In its assessment by the water and sanitation department for the 2014 Blue Drop report, the municipality retained its Blue Drop status by scoring 88,8 per cent with four of its systems attaining Blue Drop certification. The systems that attained this certification are Mbombela, Matsulu, Karino and Primkop,”explained Mr Themba Khoza of water affairs.
Khoza said these results were released early this year and added that Steve Tshwete Local Municipality had topped all the rest in the province with an overall Blue Drop status of 97 per cent.
The report did not only provides audit details on drinking-water quality compliance with respect to the South African National Standard for drinking water (SANS 241).
“It includes the assessment of water-safety planning which is a risk-based approach in drinking-water, quality management, dealing with associated risks and mitigation thereof; asset management, technical skills availability for operation of the plants, and management support,” he said.
As part of its effort to implement water conservation and demand management, the No Drop criteria was introduced in this audit cycle and this contributed three per cent to the overall score. This looks at water-use efficiency and water-loss management within a system and will assist municipalities in reducing the high volumes of water lost during purification process and distribution thereof.
