Cape Town - The City of Cape Town will have to spend an additional R3.2-billion on its wastewater treatment works over the next 10 years if it wants to comply with new water licence requirements.
This could mean higher tariffs for ratepayers.
The new regulations, introduced by the Department of Water Affairs, include stringent chemical and physical parameters that will be difficult for the city to achieve without a massive investment in the infrastructure of its existing wastewater treatment works.
Ernest Sonnenberg, mayoral committee member for utility services, said the department had issued 12 of the city’s 27 wastewater treatment works with new licence conditions.
This could create two key challenges for the city in that the current infrastructure designs of these plants were not appropriate to remove the chemical and physical constituents to the concentrations as stipulated in the new licence conditions.
“And there are considerable budgetary requirements that accompany the new licence conditions.”
According to a report submitted to the city’s utility services portfolio committee, the additional cost these upgrades would incur, combined with the budget that would be required to run the refurbished plants, would “significantly impact on the sanitation tariff making it unaffordable for most city ratepayers”.
KA Sampson, manager of waste water, said the city had already budgeted an estimated R4.2bn over the next 10 years for the upgrading of its existing infrastructure. But the more stringent registration requirements imposed by national government would call for vastly improved technologies and skilled human resources, he said, and this would push up costs.
Sampson said the city’s water services was engaged in ongoing discussions with the water affairs department about what it considers to be “impractical” licence conditions.
Sonnenberg confirmed that there had been three meetings and that further meetings were being arranged to deal specifically with the technical practicalities of the standards.
“Hopefully, there will be an amendment of specific chemical and physical parameters and a phased programme of implementation can be agreed to.”
The city’s water and sanitation department was considered a leader in the country, and sometimes internationally, said Sonnenberg. It had maintained and increased the number of wastewater treatment works with Green Drop Status and received several awards from the Water Institute of Southern Africa.
If the changes are not made, the city’s final effluent compliance could drop from its current level of 90 percent, and it could lose some of its Green Drop status. - Cape Argus