WaterCAN says urgent action is required against offending water service provides

The Blue, Green and No Drop reports show that South Africa’s water service providers do not care about the quality or quantity of water they provide or whether people become ill.

So says WaterCAN, an initiative of the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) based in Boskruin but conducting water quality research countrywide.

The failure of the country’s water service authorities and providers to give the national water department timely data on the state of their water is exactly the type of inaction that will lead to water-borne disease outbreaks becoming endemic, WaterCAN said in a statement.

They believe outbreaks such as the cholera one in Hammanskraal, now reported in five provinces, could spread.

The Department of Water and Sanitation’s (DWS) Blue Drop Watch, Green Drop Watch and long-awaited No Drop Watch reports show that the state of South Africa’s drinking water and sewerage systems is dire.

They also reveal an apparent acceptance of this situation by the authorities, which are mostly municipalities but also include water boards.

“The statistics in these reports are not new; they do not give us an updated or informed view of any progress or decline,” says Dr Ferrial Adam, executive manager of WaterCAN.

“However, these reports are a way for the DWS to show its intent on compliance and highlight the extent of non-compliance by water service authorities. These reports emphasise the challenges we face as only 50% of non-compliant water service authorities reached out to DWS. The rest seem not to care that our water is not fit for human consumption.”

For those municipalities that did not submit corrective action plans, the department has issued directives to 11 municipalities in terms of the National Water Act compelling them to submit these and laid criminal charges against seven municipalities in connection with drinking water systems and wastewater treatment works.

“WaterCAN welcomes the directives and the criminal charges against municipalities. But we want to see them go a little further: Charge the people responsible, fire the people responsible, including municipal managers and mayors,” says Adam.

The Blue Drop report focuses on the current condition of drinking water infrastructure and treatment processes from a technical site assessment of 151 of more than 1 000 water supply systems. WaterCAN said this records widespread failure to comply with microbiological and chemical standards. A total 51% of water systems showed poor to bad microbiological water quality status and chemical compliance analyses show that 71% of plants fail to achieve chemical compliance.

The Green Drop report provides a picture of what has been done to address wastewater treatment systems that scored less than 30% in the 2022 Green Drop report. This report states that only 34 of the 168 systems that scored less than 30% in the 2022 report submitted corrective plans for improving wastewater treatment plant performance.

“How many people need to lose their lives because of municipalities’ lack of compliance? Sewage flowing into rivers and streams has an impact on people as we have seen in areas such as Hammanskraal,” adds Adam.

The No Drop report states that 4.3 million m3 per annum of water is being treated for municipal use but almost half – 2 million m3 per annum – is being lost to non-revenue water which includes leaks, poor billing and lack of metering. This is a huge increase in the estimated 35% non-revenue water reported in the last No Drop report in 2015.

“Civil society has been saying for years that fixing leaks could reduce the water stress on our cities. It could be the first step to ensuring we have water-safe municipalities.”

Related Article:

Pampoen Spruit in Sonneglans has E. coli and faecal coliform