Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu on March 22 said the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) is fast-tracking the activities of the Anti-Pollution Task Team to deal with all water quality pollution challenges in the country.

“As a department, we have acknowledged that our country’s water resources are on the decline in both quality and quantity,” he said during a keynote speech as the United Nation’s World Water Day got under way.

The 2017 Water Quality Management Policies and Strategies for South Africa identify pollution from wastewater treatment plants and mine operations as main sources of pollution.

While the challenges facing the country are not owing to policy gaps, he said, highlighting that the standards to deal with pollution in these sectors are generally in place, noncompliance with existing policies and standards remains a challenge.

Compliance monitoring and enforcement are the key tasks of the Anti-Pollution Task Team.

The task team is mandated with the coordination and integration of the management of water resources quality in South Africa, providing high-level guidance to ensure protection of water resources and identifying remedies to mitigate pollution impacts.

According to Mchunu, the main source of pollution emerges from domestic wastewater treatment, which includes the leaking or malfunctioning of the wastewater collection systems designed to transport wastewater to South Africa’s wastewater treatment works (WWTWs), as well as the works themselves, and from mining operations.

“Currently, there are 1 013 municipal WWTWs in the country and of these, 544 (54%) have authorisations in place, with 23% (236) that are unauthorised or that operate under expired authorisations,” he explained.

The department is progressing with verification of the authorisation status of a further 141 works, the remaining 14%.

Since 2014, the DWS has investigated a total of 598 cases related to WWTWs, which were mainly as a result of complaints received from the public.

“Enforcement actions were taken by DWS against those municipalities which were found to have violated the water legislation in relation to WWTW; enforcement actions taken include administrative, civil and criminal actions.”

South Africa is not the only country facing water quality challenges, he said, pointing out that the 2019 World Economic Forum Global Risks Report noted that water and environmental concerns are more prevalent than ever.

Ensuring water supply is highly reliable is another key focus of the department, as it continues to explore all options of ensuring South Africa’s water security, including groundwater.

“As a department and as a country, we are committed to exploring groundwater as an alternative water source to ensure water security in communities affected by water supply challenges in our country,” he commented.

Groundwater contributes about 13% of the national total water supply, and 100% in some areas, playing an important role in ensuring there is water security in South Africa.

Amid the impact of climate change and growing water demand, groundwater will become more and more critical.

Climate change and increased demand for water across multiple sectors have already impacted surface water storage throughout Southern Africa, which, by 2025, is predicted to have insufficient water supplies to meet human and ecosystem needs, resulting in increased competition for scarce resources, constrained economic development and declining human health.

As South Africa’s surface water resources are fully allocated, its water supply needs are supplemented by international transfers from the Lesotho Highland Water Transfer Scheme, which is to be expanded in a second phase.

“In order to meet the increase in water demand, we have gradually increased groundwater use through the groundwater development scheme. There is an increasing trend for individual community members to drill boreholes for self-supply in response to water supply challenges,” Mchunu said.

“The rapid rate at which this is happening shows how resilient and critical the groundwater resource is.”

Groundwater is acknowledged as a national asset and an integral part of South Africa’s water resources, and has played a major role in reducing the backlog for domestic water supply.

The DWS continues to work on operationalising its strategy for groundwater and to approach its implementation in a “highly organised and scientific way”.

The strategy deals with the policy and legislative framework, human resources and the issue of institutionalising the approach to groundwater.