Discharges into rivers and dams need be to tracked closely so that authorities can identify the source of pollution without delay
BACK TO BASICS WITH WATER QUALITY MONITORING Regular and detailed water quality monitoring is a critical aspect of responsible water management decisionmaking; to begin improving the steadily decreasing quality of South Africa’s water resources, the responsible authorities will need to increase the number of monitoring points to track and control pollution.
T
he growth of industries and population is placing a greater strain on the country’s water resources. Discharges into rivers and dams must be more closely tracked so that authorities can identify the source of pollution without delay,
and respond with the necessary action,” says Manda Hinsch, partner and principal scientist at SRK Consulting. Currently, resource monitoring points are often so far away from discharge points that the authorities can only scrutinise the quality of water being
Manda Hinsch, partner and principal scientist at SRK Consulting Dylan Harrison, data scientist at SRK Consulting
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discharged. This also provides a challenge to the dischargers, who need to be able to isolate their own impact on the resource, especially if there is more than one discharger at the same stretch – but on opposite sides – of the river. The readily available data on the number of monitoring points reflects the period between 1971 to 2011; later data is not so easily accessible. “The statistics on the number of monitoring points that are reported in the public domain seem to suggest a decrease over recent decades,” adds Hinsch. According to publicly available figures, the number of monitoring points from all stations at dams and lakes countrywide peaked at 243 in 1987. By the time the National Water Act was passed in 1998, this number had dropped to 216. By 2011, it was just 133. A similar trend appears to apply to the number of monitoring points in the country’s rivers, she explains, although the number climbed steadily until 1998 to 872. In little over 12 years from that date, this number had halved to 441.
