Business, and many other role players, welcomed water and sanitation minister Senzo Mchunu’s assurance during his recent visit to the city that the much-delayed expansion of the Nooitgedacht water treatment works was on track to deliver water by April, essentially increasing total supply by an additional 10%.

Completion of this project is key to augmenting the city ’ s water supply by obtaining and treating additional water from the Gariep Dam via the OrangeFish River transfer scheme.

However, we must not fool ourselves this is the “silver bullet” that will solve all our water woes.

During Mchunu’s visit two weeks ago to assess multiple water challenges facing our region, business organisations, including the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber, were invited to address the minister on how the problems of water supply, infrastructure and quality affect our ability to do business, and attract and retain investment.

This is what we told him:  Ongoing lack of infrastructure maintenance has resulted in 35% of the metro’s water being lost to leaks, worsening the impact of the drought;

• The pressures of decaying infrastructure and insufficient skilled staff lead to the city constantly playing catch-up on a running target of almost 3,000 water leaks, with new leaks reported at almost the same rate as existing leaks are repaired;
• Despite assurances on imminent completion, constant delays due to contractual and other issues that have plagued the Nooitgedacht project over years remain of concern;
•  There is a wider issue of how critical public infrastructure projects are administered and delivered in terms of contract management, time frames and budgets; and
•  The metro’s drinking water was contaminated with E. coli and other harmful bacteria, making it unfit for human consumption.

Various reasons for the contamination have been given, but the lack of transparency and timely information sharing on this vital public health issue is unacceptable. Reports that not only did the municipality wait two weeks before warning the public last month that our water was unsafe to drink, but that water quality standards were not met as far back as October last year — with no public warnings — have seriously eroded the credibility of the local authority.

Despite assurances our water is now drinkable, the municipality’s reluctance to make the results of its water quality tests public, and its stated position that requests for this information will only be entertained under the Promotion of Access to Information Act, raise further questions about the reasons for this lack of transparency.

We told the minister we believe our local economy is now at a tipping point between collapse or a new way forward of working together, taking decisive actions to fix what is broken to avert any further losses of investment in the metro.

These are the decisive actions on water quality and security of supply we asked of the minister:

 Immediate intervention by national government to allocate sufficient funding for proper water infrastructure maintenance in the metro with technical expertise, and monitoring of expenditure;

 Urgently resolving of any outstanding contractual issues that could further delay completion of the Nooitgedacht expansion project;

 Ensuring maintenance of the pipelines feeding in and out of the Nooitgedacht scheme, so the system is fully operational and government expenditure on the treatment plant is not wasted; and

 Appointing independent bodies to regularly test the quality of the metro’s water and provide transparent assurance to local businesses and communities on its safety.

We acknowledged we can’t just criticise from the sidelines; that it is not about who is to blame but about how we can actively work together to address the situation, and we highlighted some of the practical actions we have taken to help address the water crisis:

Due to vandalism and lack of resources for maintenance, the metro’s most disadvantaged schools account for 10% of water lost to leaks. The chamber’s Adopt-a-School initiative has seen 34 schools assisted by businesses with plumbing repairs and installation of water-saving measures like tanks and boreholes;

 Within two weeks of calling on members to sponsor refurbishing of the municipal billboards that communicate water-saving messages, five companies stepped in to revive the billboards in 19 of the metro’s 51 wards. This helps in the vital job of raising awareness of the need to save and use less water, and there is strong interest from more businesses to get involved; and

We believe implementation of the Baakens Valley restoration project should be prioritised as a multi-stakeholder initiative. This will create more than 700 “green jobs” in the clearing of water-sapping alien vegetation and processing it into manufacturing activities, as well as helping to protect the metro’s “green lung” and its role as a natural flood barrier.

The willingness of business to get involved in collectively addressing the water challenges, while also reducing water usage and eliminating wastage in their own operations, is very welcome.

At the same time, the relevant authorities need to do its job too in terms of infrastructure maintenance and securing safe water supply.

We also all need to face up to the reality that, while drought may be short-term, we live in a water-scarce country and region. Using less water, avoiding wastage, recycling and reusing has to become a way of life.