Concern over health risks of desalination

WHILE the desalination of water is one of the leading solutions the City plans to implement to deal with the water crisis, the scientific community has expressed concerns around the quality of the water.

At a meeting between the Water Research Commission (WRC), the City of Cape Town and UWC discussing concerns around seawater quality and desalination, the Department of Environmental Affairs said it was going to implement new regulations around effluent disposal and water quality.

The department’s Natasha Baijnath-Pillay said: “We have to ensure the effluent does not have an irreversible impact on the environment and is not in contradiction to the community. “Effluent disposal must be managed in a way to maintain or improve the receiving water body.”

She said the South African water quality guidelines for coastal marine waters were being reviewed.

“We want to prevent effluent from polluting the water body to the point that it cannot be used somewhere else.”

UWC Professor Leslie Petrik said the chemical pollution of seawater needed to be taken into account.

She said she had checked the tender document for desalination and they did not talk about monitoring these compounds. She said desalination was to be considered with great caution.

“The water must be tested for the total organic carbon and toxicity,” she said.

A group from the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) Food & Farming Campaign protested outside the City offices, after they were invited to the meeting, then told it was fully booked.

The campaign’s Nazeer Sonday said: “There are two studies done that took samples of living creatures in the sea like mussels and lobster. They found the levels of persistent organic pollutants in these living creatures are 10 to 100 times, so we are at risk of that health threat.

“We wanted to be a part of the conversation around the new water supply because we have a constitutional right to information.

“There are problems around seawater and we need to create public awareness.”

WRC spokesperson Khosi Jonas said: “The objective of this meeting was to review the scientific methodology and analysis that were done by these two institutions in their measurements and analysis of emerging chemical contaminants in waste water and sea water.

“We tried to communicate that this meeting’s intent was to review the science of the two research outputs and was not looking at any broader topics and thus was not appropriate for a larger group. But based on the interest, we would definitely host a follow-up meeting to accommodate the demand.”

Jonas said after the protest that she had personally invited the members of the PHA into the meeting but they had declined.

‘The chemical pollution of seawater needs to be taken into account’