{"id":17071,"date":"2021-09-06T14:13:08","date_gmt":"2021-09-06T14:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/?p=17071"},"modified":"2021-09-06T14:13:08","modified_gmt":"2021-09-06T14:13:08","slug":"global-experts-assist-sa-municipalities-address-water-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/global-experts-assist-sa-municipalities-address-water-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Experts assist SA Municipalities address Water Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

6 September 2021<\/em>: The 2021 South African IWA Water Loss Specialist Group Regional Summit was held recently, with almost 200 delegates from around South Africa in attendance, as well as a number of international delegates. The event identified and discussed key water loss management issues facing South Africa and surrounding countries.<\/p>\n

This event, held on 1 and 2 September, has been presented annually since 1997 by Ronnie Mckenzie, who recently served as the Chairman of the IWA Water Loss Specialist Group.<\/p>\n

Water loss in South Africa from potable water distribution systems has risen from around 37% in 2010 to more than 41% in 2016, which is the last year from which official water loss figures are currently available.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a concern as the losses show no signs of stabilizing and appears to be growing worse rather than better,\u201d stated \u2013 Jay Bhagwan,<\/strong> from the Water Research Commission (WRC), in opening the event with a summary of the status quo of water losses in the country and discussing the trends over the past 20 years. Bhagwan,<\/strong> who has been working in the water and wastewater fields for over 30 years, is currently the Executive Manager for water and wastewater in the domestic, mining and industrial sectors at the WRC.\u00a0 He also presented details of the many initiatives that have been undertaken by the WRC, including references to numerous reports, user-guides and software, which are all freely available to assist water managers in addressing their leakage and water loss issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany water suppliers in South Africa are introducing intermittent supply as a means of \u2018reducing water losses\u2019 at night especially in areas where they are not receiving payment for water, and in some cases, they are cutting off whole towns to try and encourage payment.\u00a0 This practice is the worst thing that can happen,\u201d states Bambos Charalambous,<\/strong> past chairperson of the IWA WLSG and the IWA Intermittent Supply Specialist Group, when highlighting the dangers of intermittent supply showing that it does in fact lead to greater losses and possible disease outbreaks if the water supply gets contaminated with polluted groundwater during the zero pressure periods.<\/p>\n

Many towns and cities around the world are facing their own \u2018Day-Zero\u2019 in cases where severe droughts are occurring.\u00a0Delegates heard how Cape Town is probably one of the best examples in the world where a major city (population around 4 million) has managed to steer itself through the worst drought in over 200 years, avoiding a day zero.<\/p>\n

Peter Flower, <\/strong>recently retired director of the City of Cape Town\u2019s Water and Sanitation Department, who was in charge of the Cape Town water crisis explained what works and what does not work when a city faces the real threat of running dry.\u00a0 Flower stated, \u201cCape Town is the only major city in the world that has managed to reduce its water use by half without resorting to intermittent supply and the lessons learned should be of great interest to any city facing water supply issues\u201d.<\/p>\n

Stuart Hamilton<\/strong>, Head of NRW Development for Miya Water and Chairperson of the IWA WLSG, discussed the current status of leakage control by addressing some of the latest techniques on leak detection, which are being offered around the globe. Many of the options presented are beneficial to the region, and a great emphasis was placed on investing in what will bring the best results regardless of budget, and that there are always solutions to find leakages. \u201cWater loss will not go away in our lifetime, and when you do start, it is a lifelong programme of continuous work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mckenzie<\/strong> discussed the value of monitoring night flows as a key means of identifying levels of leakage in water distribution systems and individual industries and complexes.\u00a0 He stressed the value of active monitoring where a logger can be used to provide a continuous record of flow into an area where alarms can be set which will trigger whenever the night flow increases beyond the norm due to a new leak.<\/p>\n

Niel Meyer, <\/strong>engineer at WRP Consulting Engineers, <\/strong>discussed the issue of pressure management and how to reduce leakage and prolong the life of the pipe network through various forms of advanced pressure control.\u00a0 He stated that, \u201cSouth Africa has several of the largest and most successful advanced pressure control installations in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

A number of up-and-coming water professionals from different municipalities also presented details of what they are doing in their own supply systems to reduce water losses.\u00a0 This annual event aims to encourage new presenters and this group included: Zubair Sulaiman from Drakenstein Municipality, who discussed their efforts to reign in water losses: Unathi Noludwe from Cape Town who discussed leak detection in the City; and Ivy Maisela who concentrated on Cape Town\u2019s pressure management programme. Samanta Stelli, from Rand Water, also provided an overview of the current water situation in South Africa.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s two-day event, which is the first such event jointly organised by the SAICE Academy, was supported by various organisations including, IWA WLSG, WISA, IMESA, WRC, Rockblue, and WRP.\u00a0 Each year, the organising team, led by Mckenzie and Niel Meyer, identify strategic issues for the summit and identify specialist speakers from around the world and locally to present solutions to the South African water managers.<\/p>\n

The event has become very popular and is now also sanctioned by the IWA Water Loss Specialist Group, which held its Biennial Global Water Loss Conference in Cape Town in 2018 during their “Day Zero” crisis.\u00a0 This is the 20th such event organised by Mckenzie and his colleagues, and the 9th regional event supported by the IWA specialist Group.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ENDS: 933 words<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Contact details: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Nthabeleng Lentsoane<\/p>\n

SAICE Head of Marketing & PR<\/p>\n

Email: nthabeleng@saice.org.za<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

About SAICE<\/strong><\/p>\n

The South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) is a learned society and voluntary organisation that acts as a catalyst for innovation and good practice in the development of the civil engineering profession. SAICE has a membership base in excess of 15 000 Civil Engineering professionals, and is involved in the development of policies, standards, structures, and systems that impact infrastructure at national and international levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 September 2021: The 2021 South African IWA Water Loss Specialist Group Regional Summit was held recently, with almost 200 delegates from around South Africa in attendance, as well as a number of international delegates. The event identified and discussed key water loss management issues facing South Africa and surrounding countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-releases","category-saice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17071"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17074,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17071\/revisions\/17074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swmcommunications.co.za\/press-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}