• 2 February each year is World Wetlands Day. This day marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Each year since 1997, the Ramsar Secretariat has provided materials so that government agencies, non-governmental organizations, conservation organizations, and groups of citizens can help raise public awareness about the importance and value of wetlands.
• Ramsar Convention defines wetlands as “areas of marsh, fen , peat land or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six meters” .
• Such definition would include rivers, lakes, swamps, marshes, wet grasslands, estuaries, deltas, mangroves, coral reefs, human-made sites such as fish ponds, rice paddies, reservoir, and salt pans among others.

Phosphate film with Jeremy Westgarth-Taylor

This is the content of a short speech given on Friday night in Cape Town by Lewis Gordon Pugh OIG (a.k.a. the Human Polar Bear) about the proposed fracking for gas in the Karoo, by Shell.

He received a sustained standing ovation !

Ladies and gentlemen, thank for the opportunity to address you. My name is Lewis Pugh.

This evening, I want to take you back to the early 1990′s in this country.  You may remember them well. Nelson Mandela had been released. There was euphoria in the air. However, there was also widespread violence and deep fear. This country teetered on the brink of a civil war. But somehow, somehow, we averted it. It was a miracle!

And it happened because we had incredible leaders. Leaders who sought calm..  Leaders who had vision. So in spite of all the violence, they sat down and negotiated a New Constitution.

I will never forget holding the Constitution in my hands for the first time.

I was a young law student at the University of Cape Town. This was the cement that brought peace to our land. This was the document, which held our country together. The rights contained herein, made us one.

I remember thinking to myself – never again will the Rights of South Africans be trampled upon.

Now every one of us – every man and every women – black, white, coloured, Indian, believer and non believer – has the right to vote. We all have the Right to Life. And our children have the right to a basic education. These rights are enshrined in our Constitution.

These rights were the dreams of Oliver Tambo. These rights were the dreams of Nelson Mandela. These rights were the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi, of Desmond Tutu and of Molly Blackburn. These rights were our dreams.

People fought – and died – so that we could enjoy these rights today.

Also enshrined in our Constitution, is the Right to a Healthy Environment and the Right to Water. Our Constitution states that we have the Right to have our environment protected for the benefit of our generation and for the benefit of future generations.

Fellow South Africans, let us not dishonour these rights. Let us not dishonour those men and women who fought and died for these rights. Let us not allow corporate greed to disrespect our Constitution and desecrate our environment.

Never, ever did I think that there would be a debate in this arid country about which was more important – gas or water. We can survive without gas….  We cannot live without water.

If we damage our limited water supply – and fracking will do just that we will have conflict again here in South Africa. Look around the world. Wherever you damage the environment you have conflict.

Fellow South Africans, we have had enough conflict in this land – now is the time for peace.

A few months ago I gave a speech with former President of Costa Rica.  Afterwards I asked him “Mr President, how do you balance the demands of development against the need to protect the environment?” He looked at me and said : “It is not a balancing act. It is a simple business decision. If we cut down our forests in Costa Rica to satisfy a timber company, what will be left for our future?” But he pointed out : “It is also a moral decision. It would be morally wrong to chop down our forests and leave nothing for my children and my grandchildren.”

Ladies and gentlemen, that is what is at stake here today: Our children’s future. And that of our children s children.

There may be gas beneath our ground in the Karoo. But are we prepared to destroy our environment for 5 to 10 years worth of fossil fuel and further damage our climate?

Yes, people will be employed – but for a short while. And when the drilling is over, and Shell have packed their bags and disappeared, then what? Who will be there to clean up? And what jobs will our children be able to eke out?

Now Shell will tell you that their intentions are honourable. That fracking in the Karoo will not damage our environment. That they will not contaminate our precious water. That they will bring jobs to South Africa. That gas is clean and green. And that they will help secure our energy supplies. When I hear this – I have one burning question. Why should we trust them?  Africa is to Shell what the Gulf of Mexico is to BP.

Shell, you have a shocking record here in Africa. Just look at your operations in Nigeria. You have spilt more than 9 million barrels of crude oil into the Niger Delta. That’s twice the amount of oil that BP spilt into the Gulf of Mexico. You were found guilty of bribing Nigerian officials – and to make the case go away in America – you paid an admission of guilt fine of US$48 million.

And to top it all, you stand accused of being complicit in the execution of Nigeria’s leading environmental campaigner – Ken Saro-Wira and 8 other activists. If you were innocent, why did you pay US$15.5 million to the widows and children to settle the case out of Court?

Shell, the path you want us to take us down is not sustainable. I have visited the Arctic for 7 summers in a row. I have seen the tundra thawing.

I have seen the retreating glaciers. And I have seen the melting sea ice.  And I have seen the impact of global warming from the Himalayas all the way down to the low-lying Maldive Islands. Wherever I go – I see it.

Now is the time for change. We cannot drill our way out of the energy crisis. The era of fossil fuels is over. We must invest in renewable energy. And we must not delay!

Shell, we look to the north of our continent and we see how people got tired of political tyranny. We have watched as despots, who have ruled ruthlessly year after year, have been toppled in a matter of weeks.

We too are tired. Tired of corporate tyranny. Tired of your short term, unsustainable practices.

We watched as Dr Ian Player, a game ranger from Natal, and his friends, took on Rio Tinto (one of the biggest mining companies in the world) and won.

And we watched as young activists from across Europe, brought you down to your knees, when you tried to dump an enormous oil rig into the North Sea.

Shell, we do not want our Karoo to become another Niger Delta.

Do not underestimate us. Goliath can be brought down. We are proud of what we have achieved in this young democracy – and we are not about to let your company come in and destroy it.

So let this be a Call to Arms to everyone across South Africa, who is sitting in the shadow of Goliath: Stand up and demand these fundamental human rights promised to you by our Constitution. Use your voices – tweet, blog, petition, rally the weight of your neighbours and of people in power.

Let us speak out from every hilltop. Let us not go quietly into this bleak future.

Let me end off by saying this – You have lit a fire in our bellies, which no man or woman can extinguish. And if we need to, we will take this fight all the way from your petrol pumps to the very highest Court in this land. We will take this fight from the farms and towns of the Karoo to the streets of London and Amsterdam. And we will take this fight to every one of your shareholders. And I have no doubt, that in the end, good will triumph over evil.

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, has been used since the 1950s to stimulate oil and gas wells. The process involves pumping a sand-laden slurry into a well and subjecting it to enough pressure that the rocks in the productive formation fracture, or break. The purpose of the sand is to prop open the fracture, so it stays in place. The carrying fluid can then flow back out of the well, along with oil and gas if it’s been a successful frac. The technique of hydraulic fracturing is used to increase or restore the rate at which fluids, such as oil, gas or water, can be produced from a reservoir, including unconventional reservoirs such as shale rock or coal beds.

Hydraulic fracturing enables the production of natural gas and oil from rock formations deep below the earth’s surface (generally 5,000-20,000 feet or 1,500-6,100 m). At such depth, there may not be sufficient porosity and permeability to allow natural gas and oil to flow from the rock into the wellbore at economic rates. For example, creating conductive fractures in the rock is essential to produce gas from shale reservoirs because of the extremely low natural permeability of shale. The fracture provides a conductive path connecting a larger area of the reservoir to the well, thereby increasing the area from which natural gas and liquids can be recovered from the targeted formation.

The key risks and impacts of shale gas and shale gas processes and development can be divided as follows:  contamination of groundwater by fracturing fluids/mobilised contaminants arising from wellbore/casing failure; and/or  subsurface migration; pollution of land and surface water (and potentially groundwater via surface route) arising from:o spillage of fracturing additives; and  spillage/tank rupture/storm water overflow from liquid waste storage, lagoons/pits containing cuttings/drilling mud or flowback water.  water consumption/abstraction;  waste water treatment;  land and landscape impacts;  impacts arising during construction: noise/light pollution during well drilling/completion; flaring/venting; and  local traffic impacts.

Plains for Camdeboo, part of the vast Karoo hinterland, where dinosaurs once roamed, are under threat. 200 000 Square kilometres, a massive 15% of South Africa’s total land mass, is up for grabs for exploration to extract natural gas, trapped in the shale formation of the Karoo basin.Behind the plans – three oil companies: Royal Dutch Shell, Falcon Oil and Gas and Bundu Oil & Gas. Karoo residents are angry. They may own their land, but according to South African law they don’t own the minerals that lie beneath them.

Hydraulic fracturing – ‘fracking’ – is a mining technique developed in the United States which releases natural gas trapped in shale. These pictures show horizontal drilling in the United States. It allows the shale layer to be penetrated for kilometres underground. Underground explosions then fracture the shale, and by injecting water, sand and highly toxic chemicals at high pressure, gas is released. But it’s a controversial method of mining and has major environmental side effects, still under investigation in the US.

“The hydraulic fracturing process has to be done on a very large scale. It takes upwards of 25 million litres of water and chemicals to perform this hydraulic fracturing process. That 25 million litres of water is for one well – there could be many wells… 6, 8, 10, 12, 16 wells drilled from one spot.”

Just one hydraulic fracture uses the same amount of water as the town of Graaff-Reinet would use in about three days. But water consumption isn’t the only issue in this arid region: fracking chemicals are also very toxic, and not all of them can be brought to the surface and safely disposed of. Thousands of wells over a very short time… the probability of there being accidental spills, leaks from pipelines, leaks from valves, breakage in compressor stations, overturned trucks, leaking tanks, all these things happen. Those spills can lead to contamination of surface waters.This dam, which is the main source of water supply for the town of Graaff-Reinet, has been known to empty in times of severe drought. So, it is not just the farmers who depend on the underground aquifers – it is also the towns.” Shell has proposed using seawater, or brackish water from aquifers, as one of the ways of addressing this massive water requirement.One cannot directly use seawater in hydraulic fracturing because – it is too salty. It does not work well with the other chemicals that have to be added to the water for the hydraulic fracturing process to work. It’s quite possible that the toxic fracking water left in the shale could contaminate the surface aquifers. And worse: there is no legislation currently that regulates fracking.

Graaff-Reinet lawyer Derek Light represents farmers in the area, including Princess Irene and billionaire Johann Rupert, and a growing number of interested parties. He successfully opposed the last two exploration applications by Bundu Oil & Gas and says the legal process is failing us. Applicants have 120 days to inform and consult the public and come up with an Environmental Management Plan for a technique no-one fully understands. But the public, spread out on isolated Karoo farms, have only 30 days to respond. He says none of the three companies is giving the public the full facts.

If you can envision over a relatively large area thousands of wells – each of which has its own pipeline going to some central location… roads, pipelines, compressor stations, noise, dust, air pollution, light pollution, noise pollution… you have to get used to it and accept it, or not.

We know they will take all the precautions to do their utmost not to pollute the water and not to pollute the earth, but there is always a risk. And we have seen in the Gulf of Mexico and we have seen in Nigeria. American environmental health analyst, Dr Theo Colburn, says in this US documentary that most chemicals used in fracking fluid are harmful, causing a myriad of disorders.

“Does it take a genius to predict drought?

While the fear of water restrictions work in favour of those of us who are involved in water conservation, it would be preferable for all of us to have smoothed restrictions rather than an all or nothing scenario.  All of us mean the population at large, the municipality, the Department of Environmental Affairs as well as Water Rhapsody. Please let me explain?

Cycle of drought

Six, seven years or perhaps even eight years may elapse between one and the next season of drought.  These years between drought cycles are winter months in Cape Town of higher than average rainfall, and the reverse in the northern regions of South Africa where we get summer rains. During these years of higher than average rainfall, all thought of the fact that we live in a water poor region of the world, is forgotten.  Forgotten is the notion of drought by the bureaucrats and politicians that run our city.  Drought is a long forgotten figment in the memory of the population at large as well.  Every drought season, virtually a whole new generation needs to be re-educated in our need to use less water, and how to use less of the precious stuff.  We should not forget what was written in biblical times that we have seven years of drought and seven years of plenty.  While some areas north of Cape Town are experiencing floods of the magnitude seen but forgotten, the floods normally coincide with drought in the Western Cape.

During the years of drought in the Western Cape from 2000 to 2004, Capetonians had restrictions and increases in water tariffs imposed the like of which we hadn’t seen before.  The city even appointed some officers to police water use, which officers disappeared into the woodwork (redeployed), and after higher than average rainfall fell in 2005 all restrictions were lifted with the exception of daily irrigation times(no watering between the times of ten till four 0’clock).  Laughable though it is, this is the only water restriction left, and no police to check on this.  It would be silly too to deploy a police force to check up whether or not you were watering your garden a 10.30 in the morning!

New drought cycle.

We are as I write going into a drought cycle in the Western Cape.  This is going to be the mother of droughts ever seen if the stacked reports from climatologists are correct.  We have been warned of this drought, and our Department of Water and Environmental Affairs should know of this too.  It is strange that the people who work for this governmental department have not applied restrictions in a bid to save water while we still have water in our storage dams. Within eight months there will be panic in local and higher ranking government when we have little or no water.  We will have poor rainfall in the winter of 2011, and 2012 and more than likely 2013. This will mean that the supply dams to Cape Town that are falling at record rates and are already getting low for this time of the year may dry up completely.   There are another three months of summer to go and if the dams continue to fall at this rate (2.8% per week), then expect the dam levels to be at around 45% of capacity by mid April.  It would take a year of higher than average rainfall to put the dams back to where they were at the start of this summer season.  But alas higher than average rainfall will is not forecast.  Rainfall of below average is forecast, and perhaps the dams will rise but perchance to less than 80% of capacity.  This is the magic figure at which 30% restrictions get announced, and this decision would be taken in October.

The meaning of 30% restrictions by DWEA

30% restrictions merely mean that DWEA (Department of Water and Environmental Affairs) demand from the Municipality that they show a reduction in demand of 30% less than the volume of water that Cape Town is allocated by DWEA. It is up to Cape Town Municipality as to what restrictions they put in place to lower demand by the prescribed percentage.

Low Fruit

The low fruit has a couple of meanings here.  The first is the low fruit of supply generally, that of dam building and simply robbing rivers of their water. Hereafter desalination of water is the higher fruit as this comes at a price far higher than raw river water.  The second low fruit pertains to the dams, viz water quality in the dams differs from dam to dam, and some are much further away than others.  Also some are deep and others have a huge surface area delivering their yield to evaporation. Actually the aspect of evaporation is very serious.

The low fruit of dam water use has already been picked.  The low fruit of the water in the lower Steenbras dam which though in today’s terms is small, is close to Cape Town and is good quality raw water.  This dam is now below 50% of capacity, and there is precious little inflow to augment the yield.  Although the upper Steenbras is almost full (97%) the majority of this water is stored for electricity power generation. This power generation works under normal circumstances to level the graph of the daily amount of electricity needed for the City of Cape Town which has spikes in the morning and evening, and troughs in the middle of the day and during the night.  During these spikes, water is allowed to flow down to the Gordon’s Bay side through the mountain turning huge hydro electric generators, and in the period of low consumption the water is pumped back up to Steenbras.  However there is a large pipe from the lower dam to the sea, so if we had plenty of water in the upper dam, and needed some extra electricity, this could be used as a hydro electric generation plant until all the water in the dam was used up.  If  we have energy shortages, you bet much of the precious stored water in the upper dam will be used for energy consumption, or at least held in the upper dam for a just in case, which of course makes this water unavailable for domestic consumption but rather kept for energy generation.

Once the water in the lower Steenbras dams is consumed and it is going fast, then Cape Town Municipality must start to rely more heavily on the poorer quality water from Theewaterskloof and other outlying dams. This water is more expensive to process, and the lower the dam level gets, the worse the quality.

Politicians dam building and jobs.

Election fever has also gripped South Africa, and any immediate talk of water restrictions in the coveted Western Cape must be dispelled.  It seems so strange that the issue of drought which inevitable leads to water restrictions should be seen as bad political management.  The city politicians could not be more wrong.  There is a sense of camaraderie in times of shortages, and we all help each other, and in fact jobs are created during these times.  What is unpopular though is the loss of revenue to the Council when restrictions are imposed.  Revenue from the sale of water goes to the fiscal budget and profits are used wherever the bureaucrats and councillors like.  The less the volume of water that is sold by the municipality, the higher goes the tariffs, and in actual fact an escalation in tariffs is an excellent way of stemming demand for water.  In reality though the city staff who run water supply are well aware that when both tariffs and water restrictions are applied together, the average use per person per day drops which is absolutely logical.  What they dont like is that the per capita usage once restrictions are lifted never returns to the same point as before the restrictions were imposed and prices escalated.  The following fact is not just surmise:  this is the reason why demand does not increase after restrictions are lifted shows that devices to save water are very effective. Once Water Rhapsody clients use our unique systems, there is no looking back.   The efficiency of the Water Rhapsody Systems goes on and on.  This very important fact was given to me by Dave Ramsay who was the chief water engineer for Cape Town a few years ago.  If only the authorities would realize what they could possible do for our environment by actually promoting water saving with all the tools at their disposal including the devices that Water Rhapsody supply and install.

Job creation through demand management

Far, far more permanent jobs are created during times of drought than the temporary jobs created during dam building activities.   It was so interesting to hear the engineers responsible for the building of the last dam possible in Cape Town that of the Berg River Scheme using job creation as a motive to build the dam.  They built temporary houses for their staff and housed them there.  After the dam building process was complete, all the staff were retrenched, and the houses were all sold.  So is it up to those who wish to conserve water to provide jobs?  The answer is an emphatic YES.

Politicians excuse

Of course the fact that there are floods in some parts of the country helps the politicians down play any need for water saving in the Western Cape.  We see daily jockeying for positions for Mayor, party elections, and promises regarding jobs etc.  There is simply no time to address items of so little importance as water, and nobody wants to take an unpopular decision like instituting water restrictions.

Cape Town out of water by 2012

I have stated regularly that the year 2012 will be the year that Cape Town runs out of water.  The debate now will be interesting as to who gets priority over supply of water.  Who will get water in times of outages?  Will farmers get their share?  When Theewaterskloof was built and filled, 90% of water from the dam was assigned for agricultural use.  The farmers though could not use all the water allocated to them and the then DWAF (Department of Water Affairs and Forestry) as it was known then decided that because the farmers did not take up their allocation, that this water would be allocated to Cape Town Municipality.  This gave Cape Town water security in the middle eighties, but since Cape Town has grown so rapidly, this will be insufficient in years of lower than average rainfall, which years we are now in.

Future augmentation – desalination

We have plentiful sea water for desalination purposes do I hear you say?  In order to desalinate enough water to provide one days supply, we will need six million kilowatt hours of electricity. We simply do not have enough energy nor will we be able to find this capacity in the near future. If say at worst we should run out of water completely like Beaufort West.  The average daily demand for water is 1.5 million cubic metres.  The amount of extra energy we would need to desalinate this volume of water would be a minimum of 6 million kilowatt hours every day, for the desalination process.  This water would need to be blended with some other water, most likely treated sewerage water for palatability, and pressurized to municipal pressure.  This would be expensive and with energy we simply won’t be able to find.  Until now all the supply water for Cape Town has been virgin raw water extracted from rivers.  The end to this luxury is nigh.

Water outages

Water outages are a blunt but absolute as an efficient demand management measure (to get people to use less water).  Will we have to endure water outages or wont we?

If everyone installed water saving devices as per the Water Rhapsody Systems of Conservation, we would have no need for measures as tough as outages, but this is not the case. The steps of what can be done culminate in the following:  Install the Water Rhapsody Grand Opus to provide rainwater to the whole household.  This unique system receives rainwater from roofs but is also augmented with municipal water to give all households an emergency supply seamlessly. Water Rhapsody fix the emergency supply from the municipal to your water tank/s for an  emergency supply when, (not if) the Municipality turn off the water supply.  If you lived in Beaufort West and had installed the Water Rhapsody System, you would have a contiguous supply, and you would be unaffected by outages.  Secondly should you reduce your demand for water (without a change of lifestyle) you could reduce your water demand (usage) by half.  The reduction in demand is essential to get your precious saved rainwater to go so much further, and is done in five ways viz: by re-using grey water for irrigation purposes, or for toilet flushing, by re-using swimming pool backwash water and lastly by the use minimizing toilet flushing.

As restrictions bite, the municipality will quickly wake up to the erosion of their revenue, and will raise water rates.  These rates will represent the price of the next augmentation scheme, and the capital to provide enough energy for running the water augmentation, that is of course desalination.

All of these systems come at a cost, and the question is frequently asked, can we afford to install such systems?  Our answer is a rhetorical question: can we afford not to do these things?  Well the answer will be a resounding YES as soon as restrictions bite, and bite them surely will!”

Jeremy Westgarth-Taylor

Founder of Water Rhapsody.  Inventor of all the Water Rhapsody Systems.

2011-01-20

To build a system that is suitable for your garden, you need to calculate a) how much water you need and b) how much water you get. Local rainfall tables are available from Weather SA. By using slimline tanks you can keep your tanks out of the way so they don’t take up valuable space in your garden. If you can’t afford a big tank, use a modulate tank so you can start with one and join on another one next year. Slimline tanks are typically round or elliptical, and some tanks are rectangular and flat, so that fit together and look like a normal wall or fence.

Using rainwater for your garden is also a great idea because you don’t have to do anything to the water before you use it for your plants and vegatables. In fact, some research shows the water even healthier than watering them out of your own water supply, depending on where your local water comes from. Water from the tap is treated with chemicals to make sure there is no harmful bacteria, strange colours or smells. Pipes that deliver the mains water can be over 50 years old and full of rust, dirt, tree roots and other nasty pollutants. Compare that to rainwater which falls directly from the sky!

Getting the water from the tank(s) to your garden, you have a few options to consider. This can be as simple as a watering can or hose for small blocks, although this might result in some serious back injuries after a while! Or an integrated set up with pumps and controllers which is better for larger gardens. If you are concerned with small particles gettingf caught in the sprinklers or you also intend on using the water in your home, then you might consider installing the Water Rhapsody Rain Runners onto your downpipes which sieves out any dirt or particals larger than 1mm. Spiders, Mosquitoes, frogs and other creepy crawlies love water tanks so make sure all openings are covered or closed tightly.

Rainwater tanks will make big difference to your garden and water use and will cost you a lot less than you think. Rain is free so we might as well use it! So call us for delivering or installing your rainwater tanks.  In the Eastern Cape we are about to enter the time of the year when heavy rainshowers are to be expected. Be prepared and get water tanks now!

For example, if you live in Port Elizabeth, where water restrictions are amongst the most severe the lowest rainfall in recent years was around 400mm, as shown in the table above for the years from 1990-1999. With a roof harvest area of 200 square metres you would collect around 80 000 litres. Port Elizabeth also has a fairly consistent rainfall throughout the year which is great for regularly topping up you tank. From this figure we can determine that it is enough water to supply half of the average homes’ water requirements! One small rainwater tank of around 500 litres can save around 25 000 litres of water per year. Slimline tanks can easily fit down the side of the house or against a wall so you don’t lose valuable space.

Another question frequently asked: ‘If it rains so much (or at least often enough), then why do we have water restrictions?’

Another good question and quite a detailed one. To put it simply, most of the water we drink is stored in dams and they are, but should not be, the only source of water available to a city. This kind of storage does have a lot to do with drought and rainfall. Catchment areas direct water that lands on the soil and directs it towards the dam. Often these catchment areas are further inland where drought and low rainfall is more common than the coast. If it doesn’t rain then the first rain is soaked up in the soil and does not make it into the dams. If it doesn’t rain again for a while then this process repeats itself. Meanwhile the water is still being consumed and unless decent rain falls then it will simply run out. That’s why it is important to get water tanks so you can take responsibility for your water usage and take pressure of mains supply.

Source: Ezine Articles – Dave C

Trends in Water Tanks

There are many styles of water tanks available, with new innovations coming out all the time. The most common types of tanks are the plastic or polymer tanks which are traditionally been round in shape. These days, manufacturers are working with rectangular or square designs which are often much easier to place within a home and look much less intrusive. These tanks are also available in a huge range of colours, so that they are able to suit any home colour scheme.

Steel tanks are still common, also, and these are usually lined with polyethylene in order to prevent corrosion. While round is still the most common shape, it seems that manufacturers are finding new ways to work with steel all the time. Concrete water tanks are best if you need to locate your tank underground. As thy are load-bearing, they are great for placing under things such as driveways and entertaining areas.

More foreign designs: One new innovation in water tank design is to design the tank so that it resembles a boulder or a rock. This allows the tank to be placed unobtrusively within the landscape, so that the casual observer wouldn’t even know that it was there. These tanks are also fantastic for environmentally sensitive areas. In recent years. a major advancement in water tank design has been the development of the rubber water tank bladder. The sheer flexibility of these means that they can be installed underneath a house, or even in the back of a vehicle. Bladders are completely sealed and have an extremely high resistance to puncturing to ensure that they will not burst in the home’s sub-floor space. Water bladders come with all of the necessary inlet and outlet valves.

 - Give us a call at Water Rhapsody, we will give you free advice and - Rainwater Harvesting quote. Let us help you to become water-independent and live a greener life.

What is the Single Most Dangerous Use of Water?

The most dangerous ‘use’ is the agricultural, industrial and municipal pollution that threatens human health. Pollution is very insidious because it  often happens out of sight and out of mind. The water that runs from farm fields, factories, or municipal wastewater treatment plants may enter rivers or groundwater. When we draw that water from streams or pump it from the ground we also get those contaminants.

Major solutions to solving these water problems across the planet today are: 1) reducing nutrient and pesticide pollution (from our agriculture, our lawns, driving our cars, and destroying our wetlands); 2) reduce sewage pollution; 3) improve storm water management and watershed monitoring; 4) stop deforestations; 5) stop coastal development; 6) reduce pollution from oil and petroleum liquids; 7) reduce mercury emissions; 8.) clean up mining practices; 9) clean up chemical pollution; 10) stop global warming.

What is the Biggest Misuse of Water?

On a global scale; the excessive pumping of groundwater. It is most scary in India and China, which rely on large-scale, industrialized agricultur to feed their huge populations. They with f\draw more groundwater than Mother Nature provides reliably each year. The aquifers are declining. This is pretty straight forward: the world is pumping more water from the ground than is sustainable, more than is being refilled by nature. Eventually, if things do not change, these groundwater sources will be pumped dry.

We need to change the way we are using water and the amount of water we are pulling from the ground, in additon to addressing larger ecological and climate issues that have and impact on our water supply as well, if our future generation are going to have the water they need for life itself.

Addressing a media conference on Thursday, Makana Municipal Manager Ntombi Baart said this “water-shedding” process will help the municipality to meet its demand for water supply.

She added that this process of regular water cuts would work in a similar fashion to the electricity load shedding which is occasionally carried out by Eskom.

Explaining how the municipality’s water operations sank to the level where they are “erratic” to the extent that the residents start questioning the water  quality, Baart blamed the situation on earlier municipal reports which were never addressed.

She attributed the problem to a lack of expertise and explained that this is why the municipality wants to hire  people to take charge of water distribution and monitoring water levels at the dams.

The municipality is adamant that all the recent water quality tests it undertook had been to satisfy the residents that the water in Grahamstown is safe to drink.

Following a report by the municipality’s chemical suppliers- which pointed fingers at municipal employees who were involved in acts of sabotage and lack of discipline Baart announced that the muncipality has hired a private investigator to conduct an internal investigation.

She added that the PI has until the end of the month to report on the findings which the municipal will then make public.

She added that the local water does not have Blue Drop status from the Department of Water Affairs. According to the department’s website, Blue Drop status has been awarded to only 22 cities in South Africa, including Port Elizabeth.

Blue or Green Drop status is awarded to a town if it complies with drinking water and waste water legislation and other best practice requirements.

The status will also  provide the citizens with credible information on their drinking and waste water. In towns which have not yet been awarded Blue Drop, it should not be perceived that the water is unsafe for human consumption but rather that the manner in which drinking water quality is being managed still requires improvement.

Municipal spokesperson Thandy Matebese said: “The quality of the water is improving every day.” To allay residents’ fears that the water is contaminated, he added that they resolved that municipal officials should make a point of drinking tap water during all public ceremonies as opposed to drinking bottled water.

He also said water quality tests are conducted by Amatola Water Board, which is the only water testing body registered with department of Water Affairs.

“The municipality has also contracted the Nelson Mandela Metro Municipality to conduct tests on its water every month, in line with the requirements of the water affairs department,” asserted Mongezi Mabece, assistant director for water and sewer services.

Broken water pumps are often blamed for water outages in the townships because a single water pump cannot supply the whole Grahamstown area with water.

Technical and Infrastructural Services director Dabula Njilo said they are planning to install four water pumps at the James Kleynhans Plant. “Currently there are two water pumps in the plant, the other two will be on standby for emergency,” he explained. “We are also looking at regular maintenance of the pumps.”

Development Bank of Southern Africa employee Mlungisi Gila said they have already conducted a preliminary investigation on water operations in Makana and have compiled a report with recommendations which they submitted to Baart. He added that they were now waiting for feedback from her and then take it from there.