MOSSEL BAY NEWS - Day Zero with regards to the availability of water is a reality for local farmers as the Hartebeestkuil Dam has run dry.
With approximately six percent water left in the dam, no more water is being released downstream, affecting all the farmers in the Hartenbos River area.
So dire is the situation that farmers have approached the Mossel Bay Municipality for urgent relief.
Farmers have requested that treated wastewater currently being discharged into the Hartenbos River be made available to allow farmers to merely sustain their stock and the fields they use to cultivate fodder crops.
National disaster
While the entire Western Cape faces a water crisis, the premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille, this week said the drought in the province had escalated "from a threat to an imminent crisis".
The economic, social and financial impact of the drought is described as severe, with agricultural losses in the province already running into hundreds of millions of rands.
Premier Zille has written to President Jacob Zuma requesting that a national disaster be declared due to the ongoing drought.
Drinking water
The main dam that supplies Mossel Bay town with drinking water, the Wolwedans Dam, is currently approximately 80% full and taps in town are not about to run dry.
The blue line on the image indicates the approximate route the water will follow from the PetroSA process water storage facility back into the Hartenbos River, from where farmers along the river will be able to access the water.
With the availability of both the desalination plant as well as a number of boreholes, Mossel Bay can supply sufficient drinking water to residents, but that is not to say water should be wasted.
In September 2017 the municipality instructed residents to restrict their water use by at least 10%.
Mossel Bay municipal manager Advocate Thys Giliomee, however, implores residents to be vigilant of the situation in the rest of the province and to restrict their use of potable water beyond the 10 percent.
No more water
In comparison to the Wolwedans Dam, the Hartebeestkuil Dam on Monday, 15 January, had only 6.73% water available compared to the 6.92% the previous week.
Recent rain in the area had little to no effect on the dam level and farmers cannot expect any water from this source.
According to the Speaker of the Mossel Bay Council, Alderman Petru Terblanche, who previously farmed in the area, farmers have no recourse to boreholes due to the heavy deposits of clay in the sub-strata of the soil.
Reverse osmosis plant
Farmers have approached the Mossel Bay Municipality to make available to them the maximum amount of water the reverse osmosis plant can produce.
Reverse osmosis (RO) is a technology used to demineralise or deionise wastewater, removing a large majority of contaminants by pushing the water under pressure through a semi-permeable membrane.
During the drought in 2009/10, the RO plant was used to supply water to, among others, the PetroSA (gas to liquid) GTL plant.
As a result, there is a pipeline that supplies water from the Wolwedans Dam to the PetroSA process water storage facility.
This pipeline passes very close to the Hartenbos Regional Wastewater Treatment Works and the RO plant.
During the 2009/10 drought the final effluent from the Hartenbos Regional Waste Water Treatment Works was treated using RO technology, and was pumped into this pipeline to supply PetroSA with process water it needed to continue operating.
Farmers have now asked the municipality to pump approximately 4,5 megalitres of reverse osmosis water per day into this pipeline.
The Speaker of the municipal council, alderman Petru Terblanche (centre, wearing dark glasses) and representatives of the various stakeholders on Wednesday did an in loco inspection to assess the severity of the water shortage.
The idea is that this water will then find its way back to the Hartenbos River and the farmers will be able to use this water, abstracting it from the Hartenbos River.
The RO water would be treated so that it would be environmentally and agriculturally sound.
The process used to treat the water at the RO plant is similar to the process used at the seawater desalination plant in Voorbaai.
The difference is that the final effluent from the desalination plant complies with the standards set for potable water and the final effluent from the reverse osmosis plant is similar to the raw water found in the Wolwedans Dam.
Hartenbos River
Should the RO water be used for farming, very little of it will be discharged into the Hartenbos River, resulting in a healthier ecosystem in the estuary.
Currently, on average approximately eight megalitres per day are discharged into the Hartenbos River from the waste water treatment works.
With farmers asking for the maximum amount of water that the RO plant can produce per day, namely 4,5 megalitres, approximately 3,5 megalitres will still be discharged into the Hartenbos River.
Permissions
On Wednesday stakeholders, including a representative of the Department of Water Affairs and Sanitation again met to discuss whether and to what extent the municipality may make RO water available to the farmers.
The RO plant was last used in 2010, and it will be able to recommission the plant within a month to make available the 4,5 megalitres of treated water.
Furthermore, the municipality has an approved tariff list that will be applicable when the water is made available.
RO water is an expensive alternative that will affect the bottom line of the farmers and businesses involved.
PetroSA representatives at the meeting on Wednesday indicated that the GTL plant was not running optimally at present and that the required authorisations should not pose an insurmountable problem, however, the farmers would need to lodge a formal application for the use of the pipeline infrastructure to both PetroSA and the Department of Water and Sanitation.
Both the Speaker and municipal manager urged the relevant stakeholders to regard the matter as extremely urgent and to ensure the required authorisations be expedited.
Knock-on effect
Should the farmers not obtain relief, a minimum of 353 workers face unemployment, with hugely negative effects on their dependants.
This will have a knock-on effect on unemployment in the greater Mossel Bay community and a dependency on government grants in the region will increase.
Furthermore, at least six businesses are affected. They, too, in turn will have to offset their input costs in the price of their products, making their products more expensive.
The stakeholders decided to meet again soon to ensure the water situation is addressed as a matter of urgency.
ARICLE: NICKEY LE ROUX, MOSSEL BAY ADVERTISER NEWS EDITOR
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