Boreholes, tankers and refill stations are now recognised as water providers and must meet the same standard as tap water.
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South Africa’s national drinking water standard has just undergone its biggest overhaul in a decade.
We, in the South African National Bottled Water Association, say every water provider, municipality, borehole operator and refill station in the country needs to understand what has changed.
The revised South African National Standard (Sans) 241:2025 replaces the old checklist approach to water testing with an integrated, risk-based system that requires water providers to understand, monitor and actively manage water quality from catchment to consumer.
Sans 241:2025 defines the minimum quality and safety requirements for drinking water.
Compliance is no longer a once-off lab result; it is an ongoing process that must be proven.
This is the most significant shift in how drinking water safety is defined and demonstrated in South Africa since the standard was first introduced.
It raises the bar considerably, but a standard is only as strong as its enforcement. Our concern is what happens between a document that says water must be safe and the reality of whether it actually is.
What has changed
- One integrated framework: Sans 241:2025 links limits, risk assessments, monitoring, verification and corrective action into a single system;
- Emerging contaminants are no longer ignored, but they’re not fully regulated either. Substances such as pharmaceutical residues and certain disinfection by-products have been added to an annex as “parameters of concern” rather than built into the core numerical limits. This is a pragmatic step given our limited testing capacity for these compounds, but it means these risks are flagged for attention, rather than mandatory testing;
- Boreholes and alternative sources are explicitly brought into scope. Anyone supplying water to a community or the public, whether from a borehole, a tanker, or a treated municipal source, is now recognised as a water provider and is expected to test and manage that water to the same standard as piped tap water; and
- Insufficient monitoring data is now treated as non-compliance. A provider that cannot show adequate, ongoing testing data is no longer able to claim compliance by default.
A stronger standard on paper does not automatically mean safer water at the tap. Implementation sits with over 140 water services authorities across SA, many of which are under severe strain.
The standard now demands system-wide risk assessment, continuous monitoring and skilled interpretation of results.
That requires trained personnel, functioning laboratories and sustained budget. Many municipalities are struggling to deliver on the current standard, let alone a more demanding one.
Enforcement is a persistent weak point. Recent Green Drop and No Drop reports point to continued deterioration in wastewater treatment and rising water losses, and the department of water and sanitation’s own reporting shows corrective action plans and non-compliance notices are frequently ignored or delayed for years.
The association is particularly focused on a category the revised standard makes newly explicit: anyone supplying water to communities or the public from boreholes, tankers or refill stations is a water provider under Sans 241:2025 and is expected to test and manage that water accordingly.
In practice, this is far from the reality on the ground. Refill stations largely operate in a regulatory grey area, often drawing from municipal supply or unprotected boreholes, with little to no regular testing of the final product once municipal chlorine has been stripped out.
The new standard is clear that if you are putting water in someone’s hands to drink, you are a water provider and you carry that responsibility, regardless of whether you’re a municipality, a borehole operator or a refill station.
The question now is whether that responsibility will be checked and enforced at the point where consumers are most exposed.
The association continues to call for formal enforcement of testing and traceability requirements at refill and alternative water supply points, alongside its ongoing work with the department of health, environmental health practitioners and academic partners to close this gap.
The SA National Bottled Water Association welcomes the shift to risk-based management in Sans 241:2025 as an overdue modernisation of SA’s drinking water framework.
The association is calling on government to match the ambition of the new standard with the budget, staffing and enforcement capacity needed to implement it across municipalities, water boards and the informal market of boreholes, tankers and refill stations supplying communities.
