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Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 04 August 2010
Analysis of Rainwater Harvesting Market in Europe and India provides an in-depth analysis of the rainwater harvesting (RWH) market in Europe and India. This research service analyses the revenues generated by the installation of rainwater harvestings systems in residential, industrial and commercial end-user segments.
Industrialisation and a growing population have given rise to a severe fresh water shortage in many countries. RWH, which involves the collection and storage of rainwater, is an affordable and sustainable solution to this problem.
Although RWH has been practiced for several years, it is only in recent years that countries have given it a serious thought with several passing legislations and offering incentives to promote the concept. A significant driver for the RWH market in India has been the state level legislations that have made RWH mandatory for all new buildings in certain states.
The key driver in Europe has been the steep water prices with several European countries topping the global water tariff list.
Majority of the states in India have passed legislations making the installation of RWH systems in all buildings mandatory. The state of Tamil Nadu was among the first to take this initiative and has witnessed considerable success.
In Europe, countries, such as Denmark and Germany have the highest water tariffs in the world. In addition to the legislations and high water tariffs, certain countries also offer incentives to promote the concept of rainwater harvesting. These initiatives have resulted in significant growth in Europe and several other countries, such as the United Kingdom and France. These are expected to help double-digit growth in the coming years. Continue reading Rainwater Harvesting: market analysis
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 27 June 2010
By Bill Harding, a limnologist (aquatic sciences), who has been involved with issues to do with SA dams since the ’70s
South Africans will be aware that our country is not blessed with abundant rainfall, with an average of only 450mm a year, compared with the global average of 860mm a year.
Without substantial supplies of underground water, we rely heavily on water that is stored in dams. Our reliance on stored water is rendered critical by population growth and industrial expansion. Water resources per capita of population are dwindling.
 Brandvlei Dam. Pressure on many dams is increasing, with a considerable portion of their inflows made up of wastewater effluents and urban runoff. At the same time, pressure on many dams is increasing, with a considerable portion of their inflows made up of waste-water effluents and urban runoff.
The Department of Water Affairs and Environment manages 574 dams, of which 320 are major dams, each holding more than a million cubic metres of water. From this storage, irrigation uses 62%; urban and domestic use equals 27%; and mining, industry and power generation absorb 8%. Commercial forestry utilises 3%.
Evidence suggests that the quality of about 35% of the storable volume is already severely impaired – and nearly all of this in the economic heartland of Gauteng. Water quality is in fact poorest in the areas with lowest runoff and highest contribution to GDP.
Insidious and sinister changes are appearing in some dams, completely unnoticed by routine monitoring programmes. From this it may be reasonably assumed that SA would possess a national programme for reservoir management.
In recent months there have been many reports referring to a water crisis, mentioning the extreme levels of pollution in most Gauteng dams. Continue reading SA dams: a rapidly worsening water crisis
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 24 June 2010
African nations led by Somalia, Mauritania and Sudan have the most precarious water supplies in the world while Iceland has the best, according to a survey on Thursday that aims to alert companies to investment risks.
 Somalian child drinking dirty water The ranking, compiled by British-based risk consultancy Maplecroft, said climate change and a rising world population meant that stresses on supplies would be of increasing concern in coming decades for uses from farming to industry.
A “water security risk index” of 165 nations found African and Asian nations had the most vulnerable supplies, judged by factors including access to drinking water, per capita demand and dependence on rivers that first flow through other nations.
Somalia, where just 30 percent of the population has clean drinking water, topped the list above Mauritania, Sudan, Niger, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkmenistan and Syria.
At the other end of the scale, rain-soaked Iceland had the most secure supplies, slightly better than Norway and New Zealand.
“With climate change there is going to be a greater strain on limited water resources in many nations,” Anna Moss, author of the study, told Reuters.
Shifts in monsoon rains and melting of glaciers, for instance, could disrupt supplies with the potential to cause cross-border conflicts. Construction of hydropower dams or more irrigation, for instance, can disrupt supplies downriver. Continue reading Water security risk highest in Africa
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 19 June 2010
By 2012 Cape Town will be out of water. This is not conjecture.
As early as 1995 Professor Bryan Davies, then Head of the fresh Water Research unit at UCT, predicted that Cape Town would be dry by 2013. Not bad from as far back as that.
 Theewaterskloof is the biggest supply dam to Cape Town Over the six past decades, there has been a drought cycle every six to seven years. The last time Cape Town was in a drought was 2004. I have watched this in Cape Town since 1965 when I can first remember the newspapers reporting the dam levels every day, and this has been the case to a greater or lesser extent for the past forty years.
We have always been able to augment further supply by building an additional dam, but not so anymore. There is not another single place or any more river water that can possibly be found anywhere in the Western Cape for augmenting supply. The Western Cape is simply dammed out of water. The rest of the country is in no better condition, so we cannot go looking elsewhere to steal this precious resource.
Two ways of augmenting supply to Cape Town have recently been mooted by the minister of DWA (Department of Water Affairs) Buyelwa Sonjica, viz. the desalination of sea water and pumping water out of the Table Mountain aquifer. Simply put, both of these augmentation systems are not sustainable, and should not and must not be pursued. The former is too energy hungry, and the latter means pumping fossil water from the TM aquifer. Clearly these are not options for a way of finding water for Cape Town.
What is studiously being ignored by Minister Sonjica is our ability to use less water, as well as ways to augment our own supply. Minister Sonjica will not be found encouraging citizens to harvest water; mainly because this would not mean any revenue for her department. Continue reading Cape Town out of Water by 2012
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) - partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 14June 2010
Berg River Dam
Distributing free rainwater tanks to the city’s wealthier residents in Cape Town would have made more sense than building the Berg River Dam, according to a new study.
The study, commissioned [...]
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