BUSINESS IN ACTION | Dealing with the Bay’s water crisis is everyone’s business

Nelson Mandela Bay is once again facing a water management crisis. Water scarcity is not a temporary situation, and we are not alone. Ongoing water outages and shortages in Johannesburg due to multiple systems failures have regularly made national headlines over the past year; while Knysna is currently in crisis with only days of water supply left in its dam and other Garden Route towns such as Plettenberg Bay and George are under severe water restrictions due to dwindling dam levels.

From Makhanda to Middelburg to Kei Mouth in the Eastern Cape, to a number of towns in the Free State and Northern Cape, the story is similar – not only drought but also overuse and mismanagement of water resources and infrastructure, leading to disruptions in water supply and prolonged outages. Municipalities implementing planned “water-shedding” is an increasing reality in many of these places (Kei Mouth and Cwili were limited to water every second day earlier this month), along with unexpected and often-prolonged lack of water or reduced supply, and punitive tariffs. To put it into global perspective, the United Nations released a report in January stating that the world has “moved beyond a water crisis and into a state of global water bankruptcy”.

Crisis implies a temporary shock followed by recovery, but what is now emerging in many regions, including in Africa, is a state of bankruptcy – where the “natural capital” of water is no longer renewable due to pollution and overuse, and damage to resources such as wetlands is irreversible. This results in persistent water shortages where natural systems can no longer return to “normal” levels or historical baselines. Nelson Mandela Bay might not be in such a dire situation, yet, but we are nonetheless in a crisis that is not temporary.

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The reasons are complex and inter-connected, but to break it down into three key points: As of last week, the usable water in the dams supplying Nelson Mandela Bay was at just over a third (35.2%) of their capacity. The target is not random; it is based on the metro’s population, allocations to the metro by the DWS from both the Algoa system dams and the Gariep Dam via the Nooitgedagt treatment works, and indicators of infrastructure reliability, system interconnectivity and sustainability of dam levels.

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