The Blue Drop Report includes comments such as "urgent intervention is required" and "drastic improvement needed".
The Water Services Act, Minister, allows you to request or direct the relevant province to intervene if a water service authority has not effectively performed any function imposed on it. The Act further allows you to intervene directly should the province concerned not take appropriate action. Minister, the Water Services Act also empowers you to constitute an advisory committee on any matter of concern falling within the scope of the Act. This is such a matter.
Clean drinking water is critical for the maintenance of human health. Only healthy citizens are truly able to embrace the opportunities in their lives.
However, most South Africans, alarmingly, are unaware of whether or not their water is safe to drink, nor can they easily find out. I questioned the quality of drinking water in my home municipality of Nelson Mandela Bay last year. I was forced to utilise the provisions of the Promotion of Access to Information Act. After 30 days, I received a set of highly disturbing water quality results that were two months out of date. The public has a right to be informed about the threats of poor water quality where they exist.
The DA would certainly ensure that water quality data is regularly published by municipalities and made available freely, and that a national hotline is establish to allow citizens to alert officials to local problems. I trust, Minister, that you will seriously consider this positive recommendation.
It has been noted that our rivers are seriously affected by unlawful water use, by overabstraction and by pollution. Both ecoviability and human utilization of our water resources are compromised.
The department will increase, according to the budget, the number of monitoring stations along our rivers, which is good news. However, none of the current monitoring stations examines the bacteriological quality of our river water. Eight Eastern Cape people died recently, apparently after drinking polluted river water. A mechanism for monitoring microbial levels must be implemented to prevent further unnecessary deaths.
Sewage from scores of badly run municipal treatment works is spilling into rivers across the country every day. In May 2006, three years ago, Dr Heidi Snyman presented the results of research carried out on behalf of the department. She had carried out a detailed analysis of 51 of the country's sewage treatment works, and she said: "Immediate intervention is required at approximately 30% of the plants in order to avoid crisis situations such as an outbreak of waterborne disease." She found that short to medium-term intervention was necessary at 66% of the sampled plants. It was also necessary to hire up to 3 000 suitably skilled technicians to operate plants.
Dr Snyman concluded that the majority of small to medium plants were in her woods "in trouble" and unable to comply with government standards for purified waste-water discharges into rivers.
Now, startlingly, the department presented us a fortnight ago with almost precisely the figures presented by Dr Snyman in 2006. We have the legislative tools that enable the requisite intervention. How can we turn a blind eye to a circumstance that can prove fatal?
Ground water comprises 9% of our national water resources. The department estimates that more than 400 towns use ground water for domestic purposes. Our ground water is as much under threat as our surface water.
Once an aquifer is polluted, it will remain in that state indefinitely. Rehabilitation is expensive, it is time-consuming, and success is limited. Thus, prevention of the problem is all the more important. The omission of any mention of ground water monitoring or protection in the budget is serious. I hope it is an error. It must be rectified.
Acid mine drainage, or AMD, is one of the greatest environmental threats that this country currently faces. The legacy of our gold and coal mining industries over the past century now poses a significant threat to the security of our water.
The Water for Growth and Development Framework notes that AMD poses a threat to water quality in terms of salinity, in terms of levels of sulphates and in terms of heavy metals. The report sounds a clear warning when it says this, and I quote: Various studies predict that AMD will entirely decant into the central basin within three and a half years. This situation not only represents a potential environmental catastrophe, but also threatens the structural integrity of the Johannesburg city centre.
Government now needs to work with the mines and the scientific and engineering communities to solve this problem. Government and private sector investments is needed to solve the problem. Political leadership will be key to bringing the necessary stakeholders together.
My colleague Gareth Morgan noted in his contribution to the Environmental Affairs Budget Vote debate last week that the Minister needs to appoint a mining forum to deal with, among other things, where mining can be permitted and where it cannot, but it would be incumbent on such a forum to tackle the AMD problem as well.
The DA was pleased to read late last year that the Blue Scorpions would be taking - again, as was mentioned this morning - a zero-tolerance approach to water crimes, and that a dedicated prosecution mechanism would be established with the co-operation of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development.
Your statement on Monday, Minister, and repeated this morning, that environmental courts will be operational within eight months, is welcomed, as is the intention to force mines to employ competent people to deal with pollution.
Minister, algal toxins in many of the bulk-water storage dams in Gauteng and surrounds pose a serious threat to human health. In the USA,UK and New Zealand dams with lower levels of toxins are closed. We have yet to see anything similar in South Africa which has levels of impact orders of magnitude higher than elsewhere.
The Roodeplaat Dam near Pretoria has been grossly affected by nutrient enrichment for some time now. This has resulted in toxic algal blooms and water surfaces covered by water hyacinth. Now, starting at Hartebeespoort Dam and extending to Roodeplaat, the Department of Water Affairs has come up with the ill-conceived notion that allowing this noxious, proclaimed algal weed to grow on these dams for the purposes of harvesting for economic gain, apparently for earthworm composting, is a good idea.
In closing then, our country is mostly semi-arid. It is prone to droughts - a situation which is likely to worsen with climate change and increased competition for scarce water resources. The departmental demand scenario indicates a shortage of water occurring as early as 2013.
I return to one of my opening statements: Minister, the DA trusts that you will not follow in your predecessor's footsteps and deny that South Africans are facing a water crisis. We are. We must admit this, and take the requisite steps to provide our nation with a safe and sustainable supply of water. [Applause.]
USIHLALO (Nksk M N Oliphant): Ngiyabonga Lungu elihloniphekile. Kuzolandela umhlonishwa u-H N Ndude. Kodwa ngaphambili kokuthi akhulume ngizocela ukuthi amalungu ahloniphekile, avale omakhalekhukhwini awo. Mangabe mhlawumbi uwuthenge izolo cela osecaleni kwakho akusize ukuyivala. [Ihlombe.] (Translation of isiZulu paragraph follows.)
[The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms M N Oliphant): Thank you, hon member. Hon H N Ndude will follow. But, before she starts speaking, I am requesting hon members to switch off their cellular phones. And if you bought it yesterday, please ask the person seated next to you to help you switch it off. [Applause.]]