WATER & WASTEWATER
Water architects of our own destiny In striving for a better world driven by innovation, engineers and scientists often neglect the human side of the equation. That has the potential to derail the best infrastructure initiatives. Rowena Hay, managing director, Umvoto Africa, shares her thoughts and experiences with reference to the company’s Cape Flats Aquifer (CFA) and allied projects. By Alastair Currie
W
ithin the developing world, poverty is an endemic issue that erodes hope and fragments communities, often with destructive results. South Africa is no exception, but the challenges become even more complex here because of our pre- and post-1994 experience. “Poorer communities tend to feel marginalised – that the solutions scientists and engineers deliver are prescriptive rather than participative,” says Hay. “This marginalisation makes it much more difficult to get buy-in if life is a day-to-day fight for survival. This observation has been highlighted time and again during our hydrogeology work for the City of Cape Town (CoCT), and particularly on the CFA project.” Identified as a major groundwater source in the 1970s, the CFA was only intermittently explored and monitored over the ensuing decades. That changed in 2018 when Cape Town initiated its Day Zero emergency programme in response to an unprecedented Taking a fresh perspective, Anni Snyman, a passionate land artist, presented a unique way to reimagine the Cape Flats Aquifer. The GIS grid lines suggested various imaginary forms, incorporating the central figure of a woman holding a ladle ready to dip into the waters of False Bay
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drought. Verifying and preserving groundwater resources became a priority, and with it the need to manage environmental impacts and consumption behaviour. Umvoto’s project scope for the CFA began in 2017 when the company was appointed by the CoCT to investigate the development of the aquifer as an emergency storage resource. An allied project entailed the upgrading and refurbishment of the Atlantis well field as well as paced development of the Table Mountain Group Aquifer. All are ongoing. The CFA project includes detailed mapping of the aquifer’s extent and properties, the establishment and maintenance of a monitoring programme, plus the design and implementation of a scheme that includes both managed aquifer recharge and abstraction. Atlantis, in turn, has been restored to full operation and is being monitored and managed along similar lines. Extending below the city’s low-lying eastern suburbs, formal and informal townships, the CFA is fed by stormwater inflows that have occurred for many decades. As with
GIS mapping of six key zones within the Cape Flats Aquifer system. This initiated a discussion on aquifer protection zones, which have been further detailed according to contaminant transport pathways, life expectancy of contaminants and their characteristics, as well as likely resident times. This and the subsequent art rendered graphic can be used to illustrate the complex space and time relationships between human activities and groundwater flow regime and quality in a visually accessible and digestible manner for the layman. Insight inspires positive behaviours and possibility
most cities worldwide, some natural streams have been channelled to make way for urban development, generally as stormwater drains, treated wastewater outflows or irrigation canals – all of which influence the downstream quality and quantity of the groundwater.
Great Lotus Canal Within the CFA region, the Great Lotus Canal (GLC) is a dominant arterial. It was originally designed to channel stormwater from the
