As drought conditions across South Africa further exacerbate concerns about inadequate investment in  – compounded by the poor maintenance and operation of existing infrastructure – the growing question is whether this downward trend in service delivery can be reversed.

According to NuWater, a South African company that is also a world leader in rapidly deployable distributed water and wastewater infrastructure, this negative trend can be arrested and then slowly reversed through the adoption of a more flexible distributed approach to infrastructure development.

The NuWater team spoke to Water&Sanitation Africa to explain how they are working with private and public sector partners to help address the challenges through the rapid delivery of modular and scalable water and wastewater treatment plants.

Creative solutions

According to John Holmes, CEO, NuWater, delivering high-quality water and wastewater infrastructure projects in South Africa remains challenging for both bureaucratic and financial reasons.

The historical, or generally accepted, approach to developing and delivering municipal water and wastewater infrastructure projects is clearly not effective in the current environment, where immediate pressures on infrastructure make long-term planning difficult. Temporary, or emergency, solutions also end up draining resources.

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