First and foremost, plans have to be made by officials who outline the problem and the funding needed to develop, maintain and operate functioning infrastructure systems.
Political role players have to approve the work, secure funding and communicate the message. However, civil society is seldom privy to planning going on behind the scenes.
Maureen Stewart and Mike Gaade of Save the Vaal Environment (SAVE) have often commented on plans being made without SAVE being informed on progress and outcomes.
SAVE’s deputy chair, Stewart, this week singled out one example.
In 2008 plans were developed by the then national water department (DWAF) on a Vaal regional wastewater plant below the Barrage. One of the large South African engineering companies drew up plans for the comprehensive multimillion rand project.
It was subsequently shelved, apparently because the authorities, at the time did not have the funds to pay for the mother of all wastewater infrastructure projects.
Then in the 2010s, the same contractor was appointed to start planning the new Sebokeng regional wastewater system.
A black-empowerment company was also brought on board. Again the planning had been done behind closed doors.
The contractors’ fees for drawing up the plans were said to have been R85 million. The project soon faced problems, even after Rand Water had been appointed to do oversight.
“We simply do not know how the authorities spent the money and who had appointed the contractors in the first place,” Stewart said.
Mike Gaade, a senior management committee member of SAVE, who has been working on the Loch Vaal crisis for years, recently said that had government set aside the funding way back in 2008, things would have been very different by now.
Instead, we now have a malignant wicked problem in Emfuleni’s wastewater system. It never stops spilling.
According to Stewart, part of the problem at Vereeniging’s Pump Stations 2 to 10 chaos could also have been averted. Apparently the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) had appointed Rand Water to oversee the project. The contract’s cost was estimated at R100 million. Up to present the project has not been completed.
“Meanwhile Vereeniging’s Leeuwkuil wastewater works is in crisis and raw sewage keeps flowing into the river,” according to Stewart.
Many current academic textbooks stress that senior water governance officials have to be diplomats – usually independent government appointed knowledgeable officials who report to political leaders. Politicians have to find the funding and create awareness with society at large.
However, both the politicians and water experts appear to be absent.
Moreover, senior planning officials do not share information in a transparent way with any key civil society stakeholder, such as ratepayers, SAVE and the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance (VEJA).
