Water quality deteriorates at municipalities
Underperforming municipalities could lose licences
SA’s water quality has deteriorated sharply, forcing the Department of Water and Sanitation to consider revoking the water licences of some municipalities. Six of the country’s nine provinces’ Blue Drop ratings have fallen between 2012 and 2014. One province did not have a single system able to achieve Blue Drop status.
Water quality has deteriorated sharply, forcing the Department of Water and Sanitation to consider revoking the water licences of some municipalities.
The Blue Drop ratings of six of the country’s nine provinces declined substantially between 2012 and 2014. One province had no system that was able to achieve Blue Drop status.
On Wednesday, the department briefed Parliament’s portfolio committee on water and sanitation on its Green Drop and Blue Drop assessment tools as well as on how councils and water authorities performed on the tool indices.
The Blue Drop tool is intended to measure the quality of drinking water and legal compliance with requirements in providing water.
The Green Drop regulation process is an incentive-based regulation that compares the performance of water service institutions. It rewards or penalises them based on the evidence of their performance in managing waste water.
The portfolio committee had been waiting for the update on the Blue Drop and Green Drop tool scores since 2013.
Nationally, the number of Blue Drop certifications awarded fell from 98 in 2012 to 44 in 2014.
According to the department, 152 water service authorities were assessed.
The department’s director for drinking water regulation, Noxolo Ncapayi, told the committee that the decline in water systems moving out of the critical risk category was encouraging, even though there was a decline in systems achieving Blue Drop status.
“Interventions which should be prioritised by water service authorities include monitoring and data uploading, water safety planning, improving compliance and finding relevant technical skills,” Ncapayi said.
She said the Blue Drop progress report for 2015 had been done and a draft report was expected by the end of April. She said the 2016 Blue Drop progress assessment was expected by the end of October.
The department’s control and engineering official, Solomon Makate, said Green Drop assessments were often not undertaken because of delays in approving the appointment of professional service providers. This led to a lack of trust from water service authorities, which posed an institutional risk.
Committee member for the DA Leon Basson urged the department to start imposing penalties on municipalities that displayed capacity weaknesses when managing their treatment plants and water quality.
“If barking at the municipalities will not work, the department needs to stop barking at them and start biting them. That is what Eskom is doing. Take away their licence and give it to a competent board to run their water affairs,” said Basson.
INTERVENTIONS [THAT] SHOULD BE PRIORITISED INCLUDE MONITORING, WATER SAFETY PLANNING AND IMPROVING COMPLIANCE
The department’s directorgeneral for policy and research, Anil Singh, said that while it would be difficult to manage plants on behalf of municipalities, the department had the authority to revoke council licences as a penalty.
“There are legal challenges to taking away the plants from municipalities, but we would apply our minds on how to resolve it. It is not acceptable to deny access to water.
“One of the things that is legally possible is revoking a licence. That is what we will be looking at as we focus on this matter,” said Singh.
Portfolio committee chairman Lulu Johnson urged the department to get up to date with its latest progress reports.