Day Zero may come sooner than expected if South Africans continue to use more water than is needed, despite living in a water-scarce country, says Rand Water corporate services GM Mbuyiswa Makhubela.
Speaking during the opening plenary of this year’s Green Building Convention on November 2, he noted that Rand Water pumped about 4.7-billion litres of water a day to supply its 14-million consumers.
Compared with the global average of 173 ℓ per person per day, South Africans are using an estimated 235 ℓ per person per day – an amount Makhubela stressed would continue to deplete the country’s already constrained natural resource.
“It is important to understand that we are dealing with a scarce resource and that we are overusing that resource. We are very close to a day zero,” he said, noting that day zero was “no longer a theory”.
He implored South African consumers to use water wisely and to change their behaviour.
Advocating for water conservation, Makhubela referred to Rand Water taking on a number of activities, one of which is education, in an attempt to “start talking to people one-on-one about the conservation of water”.
One of Rand Water’s efforts is the introduction of automated meter readers so that water consumption can be better monitored.
Rand Water has also been able to further conserve water within its production and purification plants through process automation, which Makhubela explained was adapted to optimise processes.
Another issue South Africa faces is that of its aging infrastructure, a contributing factor to the overuse of water. Rand Water is trying to mitigate this issue by augmenting and refurbishing its pipelines.
“We are also looking at the use of hydropower to conserve energy, while some of the other projects [entail] data management and data analytics.”