Despite repeated requests, dozens of failing municipalities have still not submitted plans to the Department of Water and Sanitation to address their deteriorating water services. South Africa would need to shell out R400-billion to address the maintenance backlog of water and sanitation infrastructure in the country’s worst-performing municipalities. “We’ve estimated that the backlog for water services infrastructure, not only in terms of fixing what’s broken, but also routine or preventative maintenance, is about R400-billion,” Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) director-general, Dr Sean Phillips, told Daily Maverick in an interview this week.
Inresponse to a questionin Parliament in December, Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina said this figure related only to the 105 municipalities that scored “critical” or “poor”, on average, in the Blue, Green and No Drop audit reports of municipal drinking water and wastewater systems. “This includes the investment required to restore assets to acceptable condition, refurbish old infrastructure,reduce water losses, address non-compliance and expand capacity where required… [It] relates only to the 105 municipalities, and does not include the remaining WSAs [water services authorities], including metros or national and regional bulk systems,” she said. The Drop reports indicated that 67 out of 144 WSAs scored “critical” and a further 38 scored “poor” in the reports, according to Majodina.
“Therefore, a total of 105 (73%) WSAs scored critical or poo, and these have been identified as the worst- performing municipalities in terms of their failure to deliver water services in line with the regulatory standards. The decline in water and sanitation services is mainly attributed tomunicipalities not prioritising fundingfor operations and maintenance,” she said. The Drop reports are regulatory mechanisms the department uses to monitor the quality and service delivery of water and sanitation services by municipalities, alongside water conservation and demand management.
Read Full Article on Daily Maverick
[paywall]
The reports, published by the DWS in 2022 and 2023, showed themassive deterioration in municipal water servicesin South Africa since the audits were previously published in 2012 and 2013. TheBlue Dropreport, which assessed the quality of drinking water, found that almost half (46%) of the drinking water in municipal water supply systems does not comply with microbiological standards and is not safe to drink, an increase from 5% in 2014. TheGreen Dropreport, which looked at the state of wastewater systems, revealed that 39% of municipal wastewater systems are in a critical state of performance and require urgent interventions.
Of the 144 WSAs in South Africa, the report found 90 had at least one wastewater system discharging partially treated or untreated sewage into rivers, increasing the risk of life-threatening diseases such as cholera. TheNo Dropreport, which assessed the distribution of drinking water, found that close to half (47%) of municipal water in the country is lost as so-called “non-revenue water” because of leaking pipes, unreliable or non-existent water meters, illegal connections and poor billing and revenue collection.
[/paywall]
