The management of water quality in Kwa-Zulu-Natal had improved by as much as 10 percent since last year, according to the national Blue Drop report released yesterday.

SA’s drinking water is among the best in the world – and one of just a handful of countries globally where it is safe to drink straight from the tap.

This was said yesterday by Water and Environment Affairs Minister Edna Molewa, announcing the results of this year’s report.

SA scored 98.85 percent for water quality overall, just a little more than 1 percent behind the UK which scores 99.9 percent. Our score compares favourably with many European countries.

This year Gauteng came out tops with the best water quality (98.1 percent) followed by the Western Cape (94.2) and KZN (92.1 from 80.49 last year). These are the only provinces that scored in the 90s.

Mpumalanga had the lowest score (60.9), and the Northern Cape the second lowest (68.2).

The city that came out tops was Pretoria with 99.2 percent, followed by Nelspruit (99.1), Kempton Park (98.95); Joburg (98.92) and Durban (98.7, from 95.71 in 2011).

Cape Town (98.1) came 17th in overall water quality.

A city or town has to score 95 percent or above to be awarded the Blue Drop status.
The head of eThekwini’s water unit, Neil Macleod, said he was delighted with the improvement. “This ranking is more about management and water supply plans. We differ by the merest fraction of a point. It’s just a little something here or there,” he said.

Improvement
Macleod said the reason for the city’s improvement in the rankings was the maturation of planning strategies.
“We have spent a lot of money on improving our assets, such as cleaning reservoirs and replacing our pipelines. Our asset management plan across the city has kicked in and that’s where we scored a lot of points. We have also increased our sampling rate. It’s just far more orderly than it was in the past.

“We have spent a lot of money on training – again we scored a lot of points here.

“We have upped our game considerably, our disaster management plan is working and when we say the water is safe to drink then you can know it really is.”

Macleod said the city had lost points last year because of the management of small water purifying plants in rural areas.

“The eThekwini municipality has a large rural area included in its jurisdiction and there are lots of little, really little, water purifying units dotted around, which you won’t find in places like Gauteng or Cape Town for example… But again we have really improved the management of those plants which has helped us a lot in the rankings,” he said.

The improvement in provincial scores, says the report, can be attributed to more municipalities complying with good water safety planning and management of the resource.

But with just three KZN municipalities out of the 57 in the province and 10 district municipalities out of a total of 12 ranked in the report, it suggests a large number of municipalities have water quality planning and management which does not comply with national standards as they have not been assessed by Blue Drop inspectors.

Source: iol.co.za