Facing the hard reality of taps running dry, as dams dwindle

IMAGINE one day you wake up, as usual you go to your tap hoping to consume some water and nothing comes out, the tap is dry.

You wait and wait, thinking that after a few hours the water will finally come out of that tap but still nothing is coming out. What would you do?

This could be a reality that might hit us some day but we never really think hard of this reality as we tell ourselves that water is a natural resource that we get when the rains finally pour.

In 2014, most parts of the country experienced the most devastating drought phenomenon that left many people scrambling for the last drop of water in their communities.

That situation was eased when the Department of Water and Sanitation intervened in the worst-hit municipalities and provided some much-needed relief. The situation was getting worse.

What if the most devastating drought comes back again and the Department of Water and Sanitation cannot even intervene, there is nothing else left to ease the situation. Would you think of the current water that you are wasting in your daily routine?

Most activities that we do with water lead to wastewater. As the population grows, the demand for water grows and the quantity of water use grows in the process.

According to the recently launched 2017 edition of the World Water Development Report, about 80% of the world’s wastewater is discharged into the environment without any treatment. This essentially means there is lots of water that goes to waste and people do not think about the consequences.

Water that people use for bathing, washing dishes, clothes and cars can be recycled and re-used for other purposes.

This topic was under the spotlight during the World Water Day Summit and Expo held in Durban last week. The summit was held under the theme “Wastewater: The Untapped Resource” and it was a platform to launch the UN World Water Development Report.

The report states that in developed countries, the vast majority of wastewater is released directly to the environ- ment without adequate treatment, with detrimental impacts on human health, economic productivity, the quality of ambient freshwater resources and ecosystems.

“Although wastewater is a critical component of the water management cycle, water after it has been used is all too often seen as a burden to be disposed of or a nuisance to be ignored.

“The results of this neglect are now obvious. The immediate impacts, including the degradation of aquatic ecosystems and waterborne illnesses from contaminated freshwater supplies, have far-reaching implications on the well-being of communities and peoples’ livelihoods.

“Continued failure to address wastewater as a major social and environmental problem would compromise other efforts towards achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” reads the report.

In the face of ever-growing demand, wastewater is gaining momentum as a reliable alternative source of water, shifting the paradigm of wastewater management from “treatment and disposal” to “reuse, recycle and resource recovery”. In this sense, wastewater is no longer seen as a problem in need of a solution, rather it is part of the solution to challenges that societies are facing today.

As a matter of fact the delegates who attended the summit in Durban suggested that wastewater, once recycled should be used for irrigation purposes by farmers.

According to a report by the UN, the agriculture sector is the largest consumer of water in the world, accounting for 70% of water use.

It has been suggested by some experts that water harvesting could rescue the developing world in this water conundrum but more education is needed to educate the public.

In China and Brazil rooftop rainwater harvesting is being practised for providing drinking water, domestic water, water for livestock, water for small irrigation and a way to replenish groundwater levels.

This way, we will have more sources of water as we currently rely on our dams to provide water into our taps but we are not doing much ourselves to supplement our dams.

The current water challenges in the Western Cape are a course for serious concern as the dams are dwindling week by week. Some parts of the Eastern Cape are also facing the same challenge and we need alternative sources to ensure that we do not run out of water.

People need to be reminded that even though the provision of clean water is a basic human right everyone must enjoy that right comes with a responsibility.

All these interventions cannot be left to the government alone, every member of the community has a responsibility to protect and save our water resources for future generations.

A culture of saving needs to be inculcated so that when we wake up to open that tap, there is some water to last us for a long period of time. Andile Tshona Communication Specialist at the Department of Water and Sanitation