Crock treatment plants put SA’s drinking water at risk, reports warn
| SA still has some of the best drinking water in the world, at least in the cities, but our worsening ability to deal with raw sewage is putting this claim at risk — and endangering the health of adults and the lives of children
SOUTH Africa’s drinking water has got worse, putting millions at risk of illness.
This decline is compounded by rapidly deteriorating water treatment infrastructure that is allowing millions of litres of inadequately treated sewage to flow into the country’s rivers and dams every day.
Experts say the decline in drinking water quality and failing infrastructure could pose severe health risks and was a “great concern” that needed urgent government intervention.
The Department of Water and Sanitation admitted that, in the worst-affected areas, there was a high risk of people being affected by headaches, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea because of, among other things, E coli in the water.
The worsening water quality findings are contained in the department’s 2014 Blue Drop and Green Drop reports, which assess the quality of potable water and waste-water treatment plants respectively. The reports had not been made public until abridged versions were made available exclusively to the Sunday Times this week.
According to the 2014 Blue Drop report, the quality of our drinking water dropped eight percentage points between 2012 and 2014, the first time it had declined since the monitoring system was put in place in 2008. In 2014, the country scored 79.6% on various criteria, down from 87.6%.
While conceding that the results were a concern and that water quality was deteriorating, Anil Singh, a deputy directorgeneral in the department, was adamant that there was no need to panic.
“The drinking water [quality] is very good. We are rated the third best in the world. We are worried. The worry is that we have to sustain our standard of being the third-best country for drinking water,” he said.
Singh added: “But [eight percentage points] is not significant . . . it’s not 50% or 60%. The message is that our water is still safe — 79.6% is good quality. I can safely and emphatically say that this decline is not significant for South Africans to be concerned.”
Singh conceded, however, that there were fears around water quality in rural municipalities. In these areas — which included Thaba Chweu in Mpumalanga, which scored a meagre 9% — the national department will intervene to remedy the situation.
“Around about 50% is meeting the safety standards. Anything below that, you start to have a concern,” he said.
However, it is the department’s Green Drop report, which analyses South Africa’s waste-water infrastructure, that has sounded the loudest alarms. The report paints a picture of failing infrastructure that has been poorly managed, maintained and operated.
“This is a great concern. It’s not good news. Most South Africans realise our drinking water quality is very good [so] the concern is not so much the Blue Drop; our concern is the Green Drop.
“Our big problem is wastewater treatment works. The process of effluent treatment is a problem,” said Singh.
It could cost between R 942million and R2.3-billion to get the high-risk and critical treatment plants back up to standard.
Water expert Dr Anthony Turton said that as much as four million cubic metres of partly treated or untreated effluent was flowing into rivers and dams every day because of the poor state of waste-water infrastructure.
“Are there health risks? Absolutely. What we’re putting back into the rivers is untreated sewage. Our water treatment plants were not designed to treat sewage effluent and make it potable. Dealing with this must be a very serious priority,” he said.
Turton was also concerned about the number of water works and treatment plants not being assessed.
University of the Witwatersrand Professor Bob Scholes said the results needed interrogation. It would be a much greater worry if future reports showed a similar decline, he said.
“You have to be careful if you’re looking at single-year spikes. If it’s sustained movement, then you are more worried,” he said.
But even with the results as they are, there are “quite severe” health implications.
“They don’t always show up in direct measures. They show up in child mortality, days of absenteeism. There are some of the symptoms that many adults get, like a runny tummy, but when a young child gets exposed there’s a chance of death,” he said.
Another Wits water expert, Professor Mike Muller, said the “headline results” in the reports appeared to show problems.
“If these were financial reports from a company, we would assume that someone was trying to hide bad news.
“In this case, it is unclear since the headline results you have been given appear to show a very serious deterioration in both water supply and sanitation since the last report.”
Our water treatment plants were not designed to treat sewage effluent and make it potable