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Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 13 September 2010 The ongoing discharge of raw sewerage into the Nahoon River has local businesses and residents at their wits end. Nahoon River So far this year the popular Merrifield Mile, which forms part of [...] Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 12 June 2010 Ambuya Marvelous Mlambo stealthily creeps out of her house to avoid waking her three little grandchildren who are at the lowest ebb of slumber. She makes her way quietly to the neighbouring borehole armed with her two The weather is unruly and very cold so she is wrapped in a very heavy trench coat. The other people are just taking their turns quietly. They have an average of at least three containers each. When her turn finally comes, it is already three o’clock in the morning. She laboriously fills her containers before making her way home and sneaking in quietly once again to avoid disturbing the sleeping toddlers. An hour later, she becomes part of the snoring that until then had only been coming from the children’s quarters. It is not long before she is jolted awake by the noise of neighbours rushing to the borehole too. This time it is six o’clock in the morning and she has to get up and prepare something for the children before she sees them off to school. Gogo Mlambo lives in the Gaza high-density suburb of Chipinge and this is the kind of life she has been living for the past 10 years. Their water taps ran dry leaving them depending on water from springs that are dotted along the banks of a stream that runs along the outskirts of the suburb. Continue reading Taps in Chipinge ran dry 10 years ago Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 17 April 2010 Municipalities may soon learn to utilise water of inferior quality for uses such as flushing the toilet in an effort to save drinking water. For example, irrigation in South Africa uses approximately 54% of the total freshwater demand followed by another major user, toilet flushing. Domestic toilet flushing consumes between 50 and 70% of a household’s total drinking water supply. Grey-water from showers, baths, hand basins, laundry tubs and washing machines can provide a solution to our water scarcity challenges. A joint pilot study, conducted by the Universities of Witwatersrand (WITS), Johannesburg (UJ) and Cape Town (UCT), and funded by the Water Research Commission (WRC), is proving that the use of grey-water can be an effective way of saving our high quality water. A dual grey- and drinking water reticulation system is a system consisting of separate pipes that supply grey-water (for only toilet flushing in this project) and drinking water, respectively, to the end user. This is the first dual grey- and drinking water reticulation system for high-density urban buildings currently piloted in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Hillman Block) at WITS, collects its grey-water from 13 hand-basins and conveys it to a 200 litre tank [installed by Water Rhapsody Conservation Systems - see Testimonial by Professor Adesola Ilemobade]. Continue reading Water Rhapsody Conservation Systems could save SA’s high quality water Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 21 February 2010 Not one of one of Cape Town’s 26 sewerage plants is working properly. The problem is not so much the quantity of waste that the Mother City’s burgeoning population produces, but rather the volume of water used to transport that waste to the processing plants.  Blue-Green algae deposits at Zeekoeivlei “There is just too much water arriving at these plants,” says Jeremy Westgarth-Taylor, who has studied the water situation in South Africa over the past 16 years, and is a past winner of a WWF Green Trust Award. Mr Westgarth-Taylor was addressing guests at a recent “Green Drinks”, a monthly event at which Hout Bay residents share ideas about topical environmental issues. According to Mr Westgarth-Taylor, the catastrophic poisoning, in 1997, of Wildevoelvlei, the series of pans between the sea and Imhoff’s Gift estate in Kommetjie, was a case in point. A highly toxic blue-green bloom (thought to be algal) formed on the surface of the lakes as a result of wastewater overflowing from a nearby water treatment works. The treated and untreated water had a high concentration of phosphates – a major component of washing powder. To prevent the “blue-greens” from reproducing, SANParks had to turn the lake anoxic (without oxygen), thereby killing an entire generation of organisms. Even more alarmingly Mr Westgarth-Taylor claims Cape Town has exhausted all damming opportunities on local rivers. Theewaterskloof Dam, which draws on the Dutoits and Riviersonderend rivers, Voelvlei, which drains the mountains west of Tulbagh, and Steenbras Dam above Gordon’s Bay together supply close to 700 million cubic metres to the metropole. Despite the addition of the Berg river scheme just last year the area’s demand for water will out-strip supply in just two years, he says. Continue reading Too much water going to waste – expert |
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