Saving water needs to become the norm to beat a drought in Gauteng

Department of Water and Sanitation, Rand Water and municipalities must learn from Western Cape’s mistakes

While Cape Town could be over the worst of its water crisis by 2019, residents and businesses in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane must prepare for a dry and uncertain decade ahead.

Good rains left the Highveld’s dams full at the end of summer. But those dams, which together comprise the Vaal system, will have to supply the rapidly growing population in Gauteng and surrounding provinces until 2025. That’s the earliest that the Polihali Dam, centrepiece of Phase 2 of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, can be completed.

It took just a minor drought in 2015-16 and a heatwave in 2016-17 to provoke panic as restrictions were introduced and water supplies were throttled in many urban areas. If we have a repeat of such a dry period over the next eight years, our growing population and their growing demands will make sure it feels much worse. But if we suffer a serious drought in the areas that feed the Vaal system, Cape Town’s crises will look like a picnic.

An important management principle is to learn from mistakes — preferably, those of other people. So, what can Gauteng and surrounding areas learn from Cape Town? The fundamental mistake in the Cape was that city and provincial officials chose to ignore the advice of technical experts from national government about what new infrastructure should be built and when.

It is already too late for Gauteng to avoid that. Here, national government has ignored its own advice. The same planning process that accurately predicted the Cape Town crisis said that Polihali Dam should be completed by 2018. But successive ministers ignored that.

Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane delayed the appointment of consultants to lead the process for more than two years, while she tried to ensure that her preferred South African and Basotho service providers shared in the lucrative business — just the dam design is worth more than R250m.

As a result, neither the Polihali Dam nor the tunnels that will carry the water to the Vaal have yet been designed. And it will take perhaps five years to build!

So, the fact that in June, Mokonyane finally allowed the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority to appoint design and supervision consultants for the Polihali Dam is good news. (We await appointment of the tunnel consultants with bated breath).

The bad news is that, until 2025, none of the Gauteng metros nor any municipality supplied by Rand Water can (honestly) promise to provide reliable, unrestricted water supplies. Indeed, even though the dams are full, we should probably maintain restrictions until new supplies can be guaranteed.

Here we need to understand the difference between electricity and water supply. With electricity, when the economy slows, consumption falls. That’s because most grid electricity is used by industry. Eskom now has a surfeit of power because many of its big users are on a go-slow.

Water is different. Most piped water is used by households. So, Rand Water will not be so lucky — water consumption will keep growing even if the economy continues to stagnate.

The other big difference between electricity and water supply is that, while people and organisations can generate electricity on demand, water is the product of capricious climatic processes. Water planners and managers have to plan for nature’s variability.

To do this, they assess the rainfall variability and the probability of drought. Using this information, they plan and operate systems that can continue to provide reliable supply if a drought occurs. There would have been no shortages or restrictions in Cape Town if there had not been a few years of drought. But the entire community would still have been living “at risk” during that period. That is not a sensible way to run a country. But it is now where Gauteng will find itself, for the next eight years at least. In response, some serious industrial investors have put expansion plans in Gauteng on hold because their water supply cannot be assured.

So, what can we do? The first thing is to recognise that, even if the dams are full, we are at risk of shortages. Next, we must inculcate the habit of saving water. In 2015, the national government did the right thing by instructing Rand Water not to pump more water than was authorised — even on hot days when suburban reservoirs were running dry. Municipalities were told how much they would get and had to live within that. They had to tell water users to cut back or be cut off. That must continue.

Next, we need to keep the system running as efficiently as possible. In a fit of populism over Christmas 2015, Mokonyane ordered the release of 10% of Sterkfontein Dam’s capacity, Gauteng’s strategic reserve, which is larger than the Vaal Dam. That has to be replenished by pumping from the tributaries of the Thukela.

More than two years later, only 1% of the water released has been replenished. Is it because the pumps are not working; or because the department cannot pay the bill for pumping the water? Mokonyane must find out, tell us and fix it, urgently.

Finally, as the Sterkfontein example shows, all water users need to get involved and monitor the performance of their suppliers — from the Department of Water and Sanitation to Rand Water and each individual municipality. We need to ensure that they are making the necessary preparations; for their part, they should share information with their users, which will strengthen trust and co-operation.

Business has an important role to play in this because it has both big interests and substantial resources. Unlike electricity, there is no “intensive usergroup” for water. But when supplies begin to fail, the economic costs will ripple through the local economies and everyone will be worse off.

Cosy feel-good environmental stewardship may look good in the sustainability reports. It won’t help businesses’ bottom line if there is a major drought.

What is organised business doing to tackle this looming crisis? Critically, we must make sure that the Polihali Dam is built. Any attempt to delay or subvert the process must be dealt with aggressively. Phase 1B of Lesotho Highlands, the Mohale Dam, was completed largely on time and on budget because the threat of corruption prosecutions concentrated the minds of all concerned. Any official who tries to corrupt and delay the process must know that there are cold jail cells awaiting them in both Maseru and Johannesburg.

Finally, we need to continue to plan and build the institutions responsible for building and operating the complex system that secures water for Gauteng and its neighbours. We must learn from our mistakes. Otherwise, we will simply repeat this sorry history in 10 years.