Durban - South Africa loses R7 billion worth of water a year. This is revealed in South Africa’s first “No Drop” water conservation report.
The report also paints a grim picture of widespread waste across the country, with roughly 36% of the country’s scarce tap water supplies leaking from broken pipes or not paid for because of poor municipal billing systems.
In some areas, more than 70% of tap water is not accounted for or not paid for, despite the worst drought in a generation.
The inaugural government “No Drop” report, due to be released to municipalities on Monday, is the first official scorecard to measure the state of water leakage, water billing and efficient water use.
Advance information that emerged at the Water Institute of South Africa national conference in Durban yesterday suggests that none of the major metro cities were able to attain the 90% pass mark required for “No Drop” status - with Cape Town coming closest with a score of just more than 80%.
The new scheme is similar to the Blue Drop scheme, which mainly measures the quality of tap water, and the Green Drop scheme, which measures the ability of municipalities to treat sewage properly to reduce river pollution.
The No Drop scheme will show that the country is nowhere near achieving President Jacob Zuma’s ambitious 2010 plan to halve water losses within four years, nor the more modest government plan to cut urban water demand by 15% before 2030.
Instead, it will indicate that wasteful use in many metros is still rising fast, while several smaller cities and towns have failed to put any plans in place to curb urban water demand at a time when cities are being forced to impose restrictions because of the drought.
In the industrial town of Richards Bay, the main water reservoir is down to 23% of capacity and reported to be dropping by about 1% a week.
Overall, the report suggests that South African urban dwellers each use 256 litres of water every day, compared to the global average of about 180 litres a person a day.
Though these per capita figures may be inflated by including water used by commerce and industry, some water experts say they still provide a reasonable benchmark of average water use in the 30th driest nation in the world.
Among the big cities, it is understood that Cape Town attained a No Drop score of just above 83%, Ekhuruleni 76%, eThekwini 75% and Tshwane 70.5%. Nelson Mandela Bay and Johannesburg both scored 67%, with Mangaung at 56% and Buffalo City at 54%.
At a provincial level, people in Gauteng use the most water (about 307 litres a day) followed by those in the Northern Cape (281 litres), Free State (270 litres), KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga (both 260 litres), North West (242 litres), Limpopo (205 litres), the Western Cape (203 litres) and the Eastern Cape (191 litres).
But when it comes to paying for water, municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and the Eastern Cape are among the poorest performers, while the Western Cape was the most efficient revenue collector.
The report suggests that more than 51% of municipal tap water in Limpopo is not paid for, followed by the Eastern Cape (44.5% of water not paid for), KZN and Mpumalanga (both 40%), the Northern Cape (39%), the Free State and Gauteng (about 35%), North West (30%) and Cape Town (20%).
The percentage of non-revenue water in some smaller municipalities is even worse, with the JS Moroka municipality in Mpumalanga losing at least 70% of water revenue from water leaks or simply failing to charge customers.
Because the term “non-revenue water” includes water that is lost from pipe and system leaks as well as water not paid for, it is difficult to determine exactly what percentage is made up of actual water losses from pipes.
However, the government’s free basic water allocation is understood to comprise a small percentage of water that is not paid for - with most revenue losses resulting from physical leaks, poor municipal billing systems, theft or inaccuracies caused by old water meters.
Overall, only 51% of municipalities have formulated plans to conserve or reduce water demand, while 15% of municipalities have never submitted any water loss information for the past six years.
About 45% of municipalities had submitted “poor or erratic water loss information which tends to be of little value”.
The Mercury