Thami Magubane|Published3 hours agoNew borehole drilling regulations proposed to protect South Africa’s water resources

Equipment to drill a borehole. The Department of Water and Sanitation is proposing new regulations to have stricter control over borehole drilling in the country. The Department of Water and Sanitation is looking to exert tighter control on the country’s water sources to ensure they are not overused.

Last month, it published draft regulations aimed at regulating the drilling of boreholes in an effort to keep track of this activity. The proposed regulations, which are available on the department’s website, are currently out for public comment. The department has existing control measures in place to monitor the drilling of boreholes for commercial use and requires those users to register, while domestic users are not affected.

However, the proposed regulations would require all existing borehole owners and those seeking to drill boreholes to register with the department. The move comes as communities, frustrated by their local councils’ failure to deliver water, are having to contract service providers to drill boreholes and pipe the water to their homes. This has been the case for homes in the Vulindlela area, in the Msunduzi Municipality, where the council has failed to deliver water for several years.

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The draft regulations propose that all borehole owners, including Schedule 1, Existing Lawful Use (ELU), General Authorisation (GA), and water use licence users, must capture their details and the existing geosite information on the National Groundwater Archive (NGA). Regarding new boreholes, geosite identifiers must be obtained from the NGA before undertaking the drilling of a borehole on any aquifer, the draft regulations document states. “The water user or driller of the geosite must capture and provide, at minimum, the drilling data on the NGA, in line with the Standard Descriptors for Geosites (SDG), and within two months after the closure of the registered project on the Geosite Identification Allocator Tool (GIAT).” It stated that any person intending to install borehole pumping equipment for the purpose of abstracting water from an aquifer must provide yield test results or recommended sustainable abstraction rates, together with the pump installation settings on the NGA before the commencement of water abstraction.

The draft regulations state that the drilling of boreholes for any water use, including domestic, mining, industrial, livestock, and irrigation purposes, is prohibited within 50 m of cemeteries and informal waste disposal sites, among others. Speaking on the need for such action, the department stated that it is the custodian of South Africa’s water resources and is mandated to manage, protect, develop, conserve, and control the country’s water resources. “Without proper monitoring, groundwater reserves could potentially become depleted, leading to deterioration of water quality, environmental degradation, and reduced water security.”

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