WASTEWATER South Africa’s ailing wastewater treatment works are becoming a significant concern for public health and safety. By Danielle Petterson
Recapacitating our failing plants
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pproximately 56% of the more than 1 150 municipal wastewater treatment works (WWTWs) in South Africa are in a poor or critical condition and in need of urgent rehabilitation as well as skilled, registered process controllers. According to the National Water and Sanitation Master Plan (NW&SMP), approximately 44% of the country’s 962 water purification works are in a similar position, and 11% of all treatment infrastructure is completely dysfunctional. The NW&SMP explains that the failure of some municipalities to provide reliable water and sanitation services is largely due to the lack of technical skills, institutional capacity and funding to operate, maintain and manage water and wastewater infrastructure assets.
The challenges
Ayesha Laher, director, AHL Water, identifies several of the major problems she sees facing our WWTWs. The first is a lack of motivation to change the current status quo due in the absence of punitive measures in response to legislative noncompliance. Another is a lack of leadership with the necessary technical skills to implement sustainable solutions, along with insufficient operational resources. Like the NW&SMP, Laher also identifies a lack of maintenance programmes, as well as incident reporting to ensure effective asset management. Marlene van der Merwe-Botha, director, Water Group Holdings, cautions against generalising the problems or singling out a particular problem. Each plant has its own specific risks and set of challenges that contribute to noncompliance. These can range from limited plant capacity to a lack of capital for upgrades or renewals, a lack of operational budget or human resources, ageing or non-functional assets, a lack of performance management, and inadequate or inappropriate design and technology. Van der Merwe-Botha does, however, concur that the one problem underlying most of the challenges at WWTWs can be reduced to skill, experience, competency and caring.
Skills vs technology
While Van der Merwe-Botha believes that appropriate technologies are predominantly employed at most WWTWs, she argues that the skills do not always complement the technology and, subsequently, the technology underperforms against its initial design expectations. In cases where inappropriate technologies are used, this is usually due to
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MAY /JUNE 2020
