WATER & WASTEWATER
Leveraging our water infrastructure South Africa is facing a water and sanitation infrastructure backlog of R900 billion. Danielle Petterson talks to Benoît Le Roy, CEO of the South African Water Chamber, about leveraging our existing infrastructure.
T
he National Water and Sanitation Master Plan (NW&SMP) paints a grim picture of South Africa’s water and sanitation infrastructure, citing insufficient infrastructure maintenance and investment as a contributing cause. According to the master plan, approximately 56% of municipal wastewater treatment works (WWTWs) and approximately 44% of water treatment works in the country are in
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IMIESA July 2020
a poor or critical condition and in need of urgent rehabilitation and skilled operators. Le Roy points out that – with the exception of a few cases, such as the much-publicised Emfuleni sewage crisis – most of South Africa’s infrastructure is still operational and salvageable through maintenance and refurbishment. If this can be achieved, South Africa can leverage its existing infrastructure to ensure delivery of water and sanitation services at a fraction of the price of replacing that infrastructure.
Reduce, reuse, augment “There is a lot we can do without installing new infrastructure. As a country, we like to install new and forget about the old, but we need to follow the three key themes in the NW&SMP: reduce wastage, reuse water, and augment our supply,” says Le Roy. South Africa’s non-revenue water (NRW) average sits at 41%. Of this, 35% is lost through leakage. Shockingly, municipalities lose about 1 660 million m³ per year through NRW. At a unit cost of R6/m³, this amounts to R9.9 billion each year. While NRW is a global problem, it is particularly high in South Africa. Currently,
the best megacity in the world, Tokyo, boasts only 2% NRW. The standard for most European cities is somewhere between 20% and 25%. Locally, the City of Cape Town boasted an NRW figure of just 15% pre-drought. In South Africa, Cape Town has been the only city strongly driving NRW reduction, largely through pressure management. Using Cape Town as an example, Le Roy believes that South Africa can realistically reduce NRW to around 25% in the short term, working towards a target of 15% in the long term. “To replace our networks will take about two decades, and there are very few cities in the world who can afford to do that. Instead, we can measure demand and supply, manage pressure and use machine learning as we replace the more vulnerable infrastructure,” he says. While driving NRW reduction is difficult from a purely economic point of view, reuse is a very bankable option. South Africa has been practising indirect reuse for decades. However, the potential for direct reuse is vast and can largely be achieved with existing infrastructure. With direct reuse, no additional transmission and distribution
