Environmental Disater | savingwater.co.za

South Africa’s water challenges differ for different people

Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 17 January 2011

By: Mike Muller - Former director-general of water affairs and forestry, a registered engineer and a visiting adjunct professor at the Wits Graduate School of Public and Development Management.

South Africa’s real water crisis is that the stuff is just too damn complicated. What do you think about when you worry about water? Can you afford to pay your water bill?

There is normally some water in the Komati because downstream Mozambique vigorously defends its rights to a share of their water.

Is the water in the tap safe to drink? Is there even water in the tap? Or perhaps what you really want to know is when you are going to get a tap?

If you run a business, is the quality and reliability of the water good enough for your needs? Do you even know where your water comes from?

Different South Africans face very different water challenges as a few cases will show.

For a taste of an immediate water crisis, start in the municipality of Nkomazi between Kanyamazane, Malelane and Komatipoort. Through the cane fields south of the N4, you are in rural South Africa, with half a million people living scattered across what used to be the homeland of KaNgwane.

There is normally some water in the big rivers, the Komati, Lomati and Crocodile, because downstream Mozambique vigorously defends its rights to a share of their water. That’s just as well because if you ask anyone what their water problems are, you will be told that, too often, the pipes are dry.

Even when the water flows, it may not be safe to drink. Here the problem is not the water resource, the water in the rivers, but rather the water services, the water in the pipes. Even where there is infrastructure, its management is an impossible task in an area with too many users and not enough supply. Continue reading South Africa’s water challenges differ for different people

Slow pace of abandoned mine clean up leads to environmental disaster

Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 01 September 2010

The slow pace of cleaning up South Africa’s abandoned mines is leading to an ecological and environmental disaster, MPs on the Standing Committee on Public Account (Scopa) said on Wednesday.

AMD with a pH of 2.6 flows directly into the hippodam in the Krugersdorp Game Reserve

MPs launched a scathing attack on the department of mineral resources’ mine rehabilitation programme. ANC MP Roy Ainslie said the department’s plan to rehabilitate the polluting mines was “virtually non-existent”.

“It seems it was put together yesterday because it was anticipated we would ask about an implementation plan,” he said. “It implements structures, it talks about policy, but there is no action plan.”

Ainslie said according to his calculations, cleaning up South Africa’s 5 906 abandoned mines would take around 3 000 years if the programme continued at its current rate.

“You rehabilitated five mines in three years. That is 1.5 mines a year, but let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and say you’ve rehabilitated two mines a year. We have 5 906 abandoned mines. Two into 5 906 goes 2 953 years. My question is by when do you plan to have rehabilitated these 5 906 abandoned mines?”

Inkatha Freedom Party MP Narend Singh said the slow pace of the cleanup was leading SA to an “ecological and environmental disaster”. “By that time we will have sink holes, we’ll have contaminated water. It will be an ecological and environmental disaster.

“It is just not on for us to be hearing here that we have a serious problem in this country with abandoned mines and it is going to take that long to recover.” Continue reading Slow pace of abandoned mine clean up leads to environmental disaster

Aral Sea: a graveyard of ships

Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 05 April 2010

The drying up of the Aral Sea is one of the planet’s most shocking environmental disasters, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday as he urged Central Asian leaders to step up efforts to solve the problem.

Aral Sea

Once the world’s fourth-largest lake, the sea has shrunk by 90% since the rivers that feed it were largely diverted in a Soviet project to boost cotton production in the arid region.

The shrunken sea has ruined the once-robust fishing economy and left fishing trawlers stranded in sandy wastelands, leaning over as if they dropped from the air. The sea’s evaporation has left layers of highly salted sand, which winds can carry as far away as Scandinavia and Japan, and which plague local people with health troubles.

Ban toured the sea by helicopter as part of a visit to the five countries of former Soviet Central Asia. His trip included a touchdown in Muynak, Uzbekistan, a town once on the shore where a pier stretches eerily over gray desert and camels stand near the hulks of stranded ships.

“On the pier, I wasn’t seeing anything, I could see only a graveyard of ships,” Ban told reporters after arriving in Nukus, the nearest sizable city and capital of the autonomous Karakalpak region.

“It is clearly one of the worst disasters, environmental disasters of the world. I was so shocked,” he said.

The Aral Sea catastrophe is one of Ban’s top concerns on his six-day trip through the region and he is calling on the countries’ leaders to set aside rivalries to cooperate on repairing some of the damage.

“I urge all the leaders … to sit down together and try to find the solutions,” he said, promising United Nations support. Continue reading Aral Sea: a graveyard of ships

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South Africa’s water challenges differ for different people

Slow pace of abandoned mine clean up leads to environmental disaster

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