Raw water users should start preparing budgets

On April 1, the water year begins. In short there are only two full months left before the water year commences.

THE commencement of the water year is characterised by a hype of activity as raw water users’ water abstraction agreements lapse on March 31 while those intending to use raw water will be required to renew their agreements with Zinwa.

Agreements are a legal requirement in terms of Statutory Instrument 206 of 2001 which requires anyone wishing to abstract water from Zinwa managed dams to do so in terms of an agreement.

The statutory instrument in question reads: “No surface water permit shall be required of a person who wishes to abstract surface water from a water storage works or share of a water storage works vested in the State or the National Water Authority for any purpose mentioned in paragraph (a), but such person must enter into an abstraction agreement with the National Water Authority in terms of subsection (6) of section 39 of the Act.

The Water Act also goes further to criminalise any use of such water without the necessary documentation with offenders liable to prosecution and risking a jail term or a fine or both.

With this in mind, it is therefore imperative that as the water year approaches, raw water users, especially irrigating farmers, should start working on their water requirements for the year.

Now that the country has received more rainfall than the previous year and with the advent of Command Agriculture, competition for irrigation is more likely to be high in the ensuing water year.

Farmers should therefore start doing their homework in close liaison with their extension officers so that when the water year gets into full swing, renewal of agreements would be easier for them.

While others may think that since the country is poised for a better rain season than last year, there would be water in abundance, what should not be lost on these people is that water is a finite resource which needs to be delicately managed and looked after.

In planning and managing the country’s water resources, Zinwa performs a very sensitive balancing act of ensuring that the ever growing and competing interests of water users are satisfied without compromising the availability of the resource for future use.

Water abstraction agreement holders will have their water requirements reserved as allocations in dams and they have exclusive access to that water.

Agreements therefore help the water users to have water security while they also allow Zinwa to properly plan available water resources.

Illegal water users distort the demand for water, something which adversely affects water resources planning, development and management.

In light of this, raw water users should ensure that they have proper water budgets so that adequate water can be reserved for them.

In the past, many raw water users ended up getting more water allocated than their actual requirements due to poor water budgeting skills.

These farmers ended up being saddled with huge bills which they are still struggling to clear since an agreement holder is required to pay for his allocation even when he fails to exhaust it.

Since farming is a business, farmers should guard against such avoidable expenses. This can be avoided through timely preparation of water budgets.