South Africa is a water-scarce country. In other words, it has an excess of demand over available supply. It also has low water security – the ability to ensure sustainable access to good quality water. The country’s economic hub and biggest population centre, Gauteng province, has suffered sequential water crises that have been a blend of both factors, combined with some others, such as a lack of maintenance.
Caroline Southey from The Conversation Africa put questions to Craig Sheridan, the director of the Centre in Water Research and Development at the University of the Witwatersrand, about the creation of a new platform, or dashboard, that features up-to-date information about the Integrated Vaal River System, which feeds the region. The aim is to keep residents informed and authorities accountable.
What’s behind Gauteng’s ongoing water crises?
There are four main pressure points that are affecting water security in Gauteng. They are:
- The water losses through reticulation systems. Too much water – around 46% in Gauteng – is lost through failing infrastructure or theft.
- The very hot, dry weather experienced in Gauteng every year just before the rains start (September to mid-October). This drives up normal demand substantially. Rand Water (the bulk service water provider for Gauteng), has implemented water restrictions. But these can only reduce consumption if they are followed.
- The increasing number of people living in Gauteng. If water treatment and reticulation infrastructure is not upgraded, it is not able to cope with increased demand. This can result in reservoirs running empty. Rand Water has been conducting system upgrades across the province and Phase 2 of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project has commenced, which will increase water supply by 2028.
- The impact of climate change. It is getting hotter. This places increased demands on the supply of water. Also, water stored in the dams evaporates far more quickly.
How will the ‘dashboard’ improve water management?
The “water dashboard” has been developed to provide meaningful, reliable, up-to-date information so that residents can make informed decisions about their personal water use. And the information for all cities in the province can be found in one place.
A similar approach was used by the City of Cape Town to avert a serious water shortage crisis during the five-year drought which ended in 2018 following some of the driest years recorded.
The provision of regular information (weekly in that case) helped the residents understand just how bad things were, without the engineering jargon. It certainly helped to inform society, and that helped to prevent “day zero” – the point where there is no further water available for extraction in the storage systems – from happening.
Similarly, in Gauteng the idea is to inform people. The hope is that they will reduce water consumption when faced with evidence that storage levels have dropped. If people know how bad things are, they can use less – and avoid the day-zero type crisis.
The dashboard considers the entire province, rather than focusing on one city.
In my view it should be welcomed as a serious intervention because it has the potential to provide residents with accurate information. This is particularly useful given that they are currently in the middle of severe water outages.
How will it work?
For now, the dashboard is static. But the aim is to make it interactive, which will allow users to drill down for more detailed information.
The dashboard starts with a table describing overall water consumption for the major metropolitan areas in Gauteng. It also details the difference between the target and actual consumption.
For example, for this week, the target for the province is exceeded by 12%, and Johannesburg by 24%. This is a warning to the metro and users that consumption is too high. These targets are set by national government. (Rand Water is granted an abstraction licence of 4,385 million litres per day and divides this up between the metros and other users.)
The trends for the metros are presented in a graph which highlights this information.
Very importantly, the dashboard shows the status of the whole Integrated Vaal River System – and not just the Vaal Dam which tends to be the focus of attention. But the Vaal Dam is only a part of the Integrated Vaal River System. While it can be low it doesn’t mean that the entire storage system is low. It is far more useful to look at the Integrated Vaal River System and to understand water usage or shortage within the system than to look at one component of the system in isolation.
Currently the Integrated Vaal River System is running at moderately low to low in terms of water available in the storage system.
There is also a section that helps residents understand the status of reported leaks across the main metros. The metros have been requested to supply this information. If repair backlogs grow too large, or if the metros are not providing the data, civil society can apply pressure on them.
There is a further section showing residents the water distribution systems. This means that residents can now see which pump stations and reservoirs they get their water from.
Read More: Is my water safe to drink? Expert advice for residents of South African cities
And finally there is a neat infographic which explains why higher suburbs lose water pressure and go dry when demand is too high (as is happening across large parts of Johannesburg and Tshwane).
Additionally, non-revenue water is shown and the metros are compared. This is a positive metric to display because residents can ask their metros why their non-revenue water statistics are worse (or better) than others.
While the new dashboard is not perfect, comments and improvements are being solicited. More importantly, it reflects a willingness on the part of the Department of Water and Sanitation to be more transparent and to give the public the data (and information) affecting their water systems.
There are still major challenges faced by the sector. This intervention is one of many that will play a part towards Gauteng becoming water secure. For that to happen municipal infrastructure needs to be repaired, upgraded and replaced where necessary. Large water leaks that are left unchecked undermine the efforts made by the public to help with water conservation.
Is this a unique approach? Has it been done elsewhere?
There are instances of dashboards locally and globally. The City of Cape Town developed one to help stave off the day-zero crisis.
Other dashoards are available globally, such as the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which also gives quite detailed information at various resolution. The US Geological Survey also has an online dashboard which is interactive.
- is a Professor, University of the Witwatersrand
- This article first appeared in The Conversation