It has been revealed that 40%of KwaZulu-Natal’s water supply water is being lost.

This came to light after the minister of Water Affairs, Edna Molewa, replied in writing to a parliamentary question. In it she statedthat the 14 water service authorities in the province had lost, in total, more than 22 million cubic metres of water each month in the past financial year.

This was out of the 55.5 million cubic metres of water that was pumped into the province’s supply systems each month during the period 1July 2011 to the end of April 2012.

The term “lost” includes pipe leakage and illegal abstraction, as well as water not billed for by the authority.

According to an annexure attached to Molewa’s reply, the authority with the highest loss was the Newcastle Local Municipality, which lost, on average, about 70% of its input a month.Of the 1.83 million cubic metres put into its water system each month, 1.28 million was lost.

The eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality lost 9.39 million cubic metres of the 26.15 million cubic metresput into its system each month (35%).

Annualising the total of the monthly averages for all 14 of the authorities gives a total loss for the year of about 266.4 million cubic metres. In comparison, the capacity of the province’s Midmar Dam is 235 million cubic metres. The water losses are also almost twice as large as the gross storage volume of the new Spring Grove Dam, which is being built on the Mooi River and expected to be completed next year.

Water authorities in the province are also looking to the desalination of sea water to help augment supply in what they describe as a “very stressed” system.