MANAGEMENT OF WATER KEY TO ECONOMY
AS A developing country, South Africa has an extremely huge appetite for water consumption and therefore meticulous management of this scarce resource is one of the centrepieces required to shape the country’s social and economic prospects.
This is even more important given that we are in the midst of the gravest health crisis presented by the global coronavirus pandemic.
The Department of Water and Sanitation’s ( DWS) gauging stations across the country are therefore uniquely placed to ensure that proper water management takes place by continuously determining water volumes and quality. Failure to measure water volumes and quality simply means our water resources are poorly managed and will not optimally benefit the country and consumers.
As the custodian of all water resources in the country, DWS is the main user of the hydrometic data collected from gauging stations for the overall planning of water availability for present and future use, and not least of which is the expansion of urban areas and projections of areas that might need water in the future.
These strategically placed gauging stations, whose role is not properly appreciated, are fully equipped with purpose- built flow gauging weir, inlet systems, gauge plates and other instruments that enable them to fulfil the all- important work of hydrometric date collection.
The stations provide the most up- to- date hydrometric data to users on water volumes and quality in nearreal time.
Other users of the data collected by the stations include municipalities and consulting engineers who require historical information to plan new developments and future water use requirements. In most cases they use the data to determine how the flow regime of the rivers has changed over time as well as the volumes of the water available at that point or downstream.
Hydrometric data is also used by the general public, including residents and farmers, who are heavily reliant on the data to avoid all sorts of calamities, especially during flood events.
In the absence of gauging stations, the country would be in a vulnerable position because proper planning would be difficult and result into a dire situation for areas where water is needed. Logically, it follows that there cannot be proper water management without the existence of gauging stations to measure both water quality and quantity.
For example, a gauging station such as the Goose Bay Canyon in the Free State is indispensable because of its relationship to the Vaal Dam and the Integrated Vaal River System ( IVRS). It monitors the outflow from the Vaal Barrage, which is not only fed by tributaries such as the Suikerbosrant and Klip Rivers, but also by water that is released from Vaal Dam. The water entering the Barrage, other than from the Vaal Dam, is heavily polluted due to various reasons.
During spring and early summer, when there has been minimal rainfall and subsequent increased run- off into the Barrage, the concentration of pollutants in the water downstream becomes too high. Based on the information generated by the station, some of the much less polluted water from the Vaal Dam is then released to dilute the Barrage water body and outflow to acceptable levels.
The country’s gauging stations play a crucial role in obviating a disastrous impact on water resources and enables the department to make timeous interventions during critical times.