Water is a vital resource. Life on earth, as we know it, is impossible without access to safe drinking water. Concerns over the declining quality and consistency of municipal drinking water supplied to consumers have been increasing for a long time.
In South Africa, widespread problems with the availability and quality of drinking water across urban areas have been well-documented and have often given rise to protests.
For example, there have been service delivery protests in the eThekwini municipality, an important port city, amid power and water outages as well as in Johannesburg, the country’s economic centre.
There are many types of contaminants that can threaten the safety and quality of drinking water. The major water pollutants are disease-causing organisms (pathogens) and toxic chemicals.
Drinking water means more than the relatively small amount used for direct drinking. Water used for brushing teeth, washing food, washing hands (particularly when handling babies or young children) and washing tableware used while eating should receive priority when clean, safe water is scarce.
As a researcher working for decades on water issues, health and water and water quality, I can offer some suggestions about how people can purify their water and deal with water interruptions.
It’s not possible for the general public to purify all the water supplied to them every day using home-based methods. It is simply too expensive and laborious. So, the advice below concentrates on the situations when disasters or emergencies force residents to temporarily purify drinking water for themselves and their families.
Making water safe to drink
A simple filter: If the only available water has not been purified by any official system, pour the water through a sieve lined with one or more layers of paper towel or a dishcloth. When the “filter” becomes clogged, replace it with a clean layer. Do not reuse the soiled dishcloth without thoroughly washing it in hot water and soap and drying it in the sunlight.
Boiling: Bring the filtered water to a rolling boil for at least 3 minutes. Boiling the filtered water will get rid of the disease-causing organisms. It won’t remove any harmful chemicals that may be present, but it may reduce the concentration of some of them.
Bleach: Add a teaspoon of unscented household bleach (5 millilitres of a 3.5% sodium hypochlorite solution) to 25 litres of water for the treatment of drinking water. Mix well, cover the container and let the water stand for at least two hours before using it.
This should disinfect most of the disease-causing organisms and make the water much safer to use. Important: do not use any cleaning solution containing bleach that also includes other soaps or cleaning compounds. Use only unscented chlorinated household bleach.
Solar disinfection of water: Nicknamed SODIS, it can be used to disinfect water by killing disease-causing organisms using sunlight. Fill glass (preferable) or plastic bottles with contaminated water and place them in direct sunlight for at least six hours on a sunny day or up to two days if the weather is overcast. The heat and the ultraviolet radiation from the sun disinfect the water by killing most of the disease-causing organisms.
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A problem that’s growing
The quality of water being delivered to South African residents continues to deteriorate. This is due to ageing or broken infrastructure, inadequate water and sewage treatment, poorly trained staff and extensive, uncontrolled sources of pollution.
The Blue Drop Report of 2023 is the newest official data from the Department of Water and Sanitation. If found that only 26 water supply systems achieved a Blue Drop score of around 95%. This was down from 44 water supply systems that achieved this distinction in 2014. Countrywide, 29% of water supply systems were identified as being in a critical state.
The nongovernmental organisation AfriForum tested the municipal drinking water quality of 210 towns and cities across South Africa in 2024 (17 locations more than in 2023).
The tests indicated that 87% of municipal drinking water was safe for human consumption and met the minimum requirements. This represents a nine percentage point decrease from the 96% that was indicated as safe in the previous year.
Water quality is not the only aspect of water provision that affects the health and safety of citizens. Water availability is crucial for hygiene and safe living standards. For years, some parts of the country have been experiencing widespread water outages due to a combination of climate change-induced droughts, ageing and under-maintained infrastructure, population growth and poor management. There have been frequent and prolonged disruptions, particularly in the Johannesburg area.
This forced municipalities to implement water shedding, water throttling and water rationing. Water shedding typically occurs when the demand for water exceeds the available supply, forcing authorities to ration water. This can mean scheduled water outages, reduced water pressure, or even complete cuts in supply in certain areas for a specific period of time. Water throttling refers to reduced water pressure to decrease water use, while water rationing means only having a certain amount of water available per day or week.
A new report from the Department of Water and Sanitation warns that the provinces of Gauteng and the Western Cape, in particular,r are set to face increasing water scarcity due to rising populations driven by in-migration.
- This article was first published by The Conversation.
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