Report is first official scorecard to measure the state of water leakage, water billing and efficient water usage

WITH South Africa's first “No Drop” water conservation report expected to reveal a grim picture of widespread waste across the country, residents in the Northern Cape – the driest and most sparsely populated province in the country – use a whopping 281 litres of water per person per day.

This is the second highest consumption in the country, topped only by Gauteng, where it is estimated that residents use around 307 litres a day.

Roughly 36 percent of the country’s scarce tap water supplies is leaking from broken pipes or not paid for because of poor municipal billing systems. The financial value of this “lost water” is estimated at around R7 billion a year.

In some areas, more than 70 percent of tap water is not accounted for or not paid for, despite the worst drought in a generation.

A Non-Revenue Water Audit done in Kimberley in 2011, showed that at the time 45 percent of the water produced in the city (an average 75 ML/day) was lost due to leakages in the system, a further 6.6 percent was lost by consumers who were not paying their bills, 10.1 percent was used by unauthorised/unregistered consumption and 7.1 percent was not recorded due to a lack of meter readings.

It was estimated that there were as many as 7 800 illegal water connections in the city.

Only 26.2 percent of the water produced was properly metered, invoiced for and paid for by local consumers.

The report prompted the Sol Plaatje Municipality to launch a multi-pronged attack including zoning of the water reticulation system into 15 zones, the installation of bulk meters as well as pressure reducing valves, the decommissioning of 26km of unnecessary pipes and the installation of 6km of new pipes to facilitate flow and replace undersized pipes.

The water storage dams at the Newton Reservoir were also isolated to prevent the entire city having to be shut down and the system drained to effect repairs and do maintenance, while the two major pipelines from Riverton to the city were also upgraded.

Municipal spokesman, Sello Matsie, said yesterday that the action plan had gone a long way to improve the management of the city’s water resources and added that while pipe bursts were still experienced, these were usually on the smaller pipes feeding homes and not massive bursts on the major pipelines.

He was, however, unable to give exact figures on current water losses in the city.

“Gone are the days, however, where we had to shut down the entire city and at any point we are able to determine how much water is in the reticulation system and the consumption of each zone.

“The true success of the city’s water network optimisation plan will be revealed, however, when the inaugural government “No Drop” report is released to municipalities on Monday.”

The report is the first official scorecard to measure the state of water leakage, water billing and efficient water use.

Advance information that emerged at the Water Institute of South Africa national conference in Durban yesterday suggests that none of the major metro cities were able to attain the 90 percent pass mark required for “No Drop” status – with Cape Town coming closest with a score of just over 80 percent.

The new scheme is similar to the Blue Drop scheme which mainly measures the quality of tap water and the Green Drop scheme which measures the ability of municipalities to treat sewage properly to reduce river pollution.

The No Drop scheme will show that the country is nowhere near achieving President Jacob Zuma’s ambitious 2010 plan to halve water losses within four years, nor the more modest government plan to cut urban water demand by 15 percent before 2030.

Instead, it will indicate that wasteful use in many metros is still rising fast, while several smaller cities and towns have failed to put any plans in place to curb urban water demand at a time when cities are being forced to impose restrictions because of the drought.

In the industrial town of Richards Bay, the main water reservoir is down to 23 percent of capacity and reported to be dropping by about 1 percent a week.

Overall, the report suggests that South African urban dwellers each use 256 litres of water every day, compared to the global average of about 180 litres per person per day.

Though these per capita figures may be inflated by including water used by commerce and industry, some water experts say they still provide a reasonable benchmark of average water use in the 30th driest nations in the world.

Among the big cities, it is understood that Cape Town attained a No Drop score of just above 83 percent, Ekhuruleni 76 percent, Ethekwini 75 percent and Tshwane 70.5 percent. Nelson Mandela Bay and Johannesburg both scored 67 percent, with Mangaung at 56 percent and Buffalo City at 54 percent.

At a provincial level, people in Gauteng use the most water (about 307 litres a day) followed by those in the Northern Cape (281 litres), Free State (270 litres), KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga (both 260 litres), North West (242 litres), Limpopo (205 litres), Western Cape (203 litres) and Eastern Cape (191 litres).

But when it comes to paying for water, municipalities in KwaZuluNatal, Limpopo and the Eastern Cape are among the poorest performers while the Western Cape was the most efficient revenue collector.

The report suggests that more than 51 percent of municipal tap water in Limpopo is not paid for, followed by Eastern Cape (44.5 percent water not paid for), KZN and Mpumalanga (both 40 percent), Northern Cape (39 percent), Free State and Gauteng (about 35 percent), North West (30 percent) and Cape Town (20 percent).

The percentage of non-revenue water in some smaller municipalities is even worse, with the JS Moroka Municipality in Mpumalanga losing at least 70 percent of water revenue from water leaks or simply failing to charge customers.

Because the term “non-revenue water” includes water that is lost from pipe and system leaks as well as water not paid for, it is difficult to determine exactly what percentage is made up of actual water losses from pipes.

However, the government’s free basic water allocation is understood to comprise a very small percentage of water that is not paid for – with most revenue losses resulting from physical leaks, poor municipal billing systems, theft or inaccuracies caused by old water meters.

Overall, only 51 percent of municipalities have formulated plans to conserve or reduce water demand, while 15 percent of municipalities have never submitted any water loss information for the last six years.

About 45 percent of municipalities had submitted “poor or erratic water loss information which tends to be of little value”.