When I was a schoolboy several centuries ago, Water Week was a time for mind-numbing class projects. Many of us boarding school kids did the bare minimum to show we had gone to a library to read a book on water, as day scholars unveiled beautiful montages created by their parents. We were all forced to learn a thousand boring ways to save water, waste water, and use water – and promptly forgot them the week after.
The irony is that this was during the apartheid era, when the vast majority of the population had no access to running water. Water Week was in fact a symbol not of boring education, but of oppression. The projects were part of the propaganda of normalcy.
Fast forward a few decades, and the right to access to sufficient water is entrenched in the constitution. Knowledge about water conservation, and projects to promote its sustainable use, can readily be found online.
Yet, according to Stats SA, only 44,9% of South African households had access to piped water in their dwellings in 2019. Another 28,5% could access water on site, 12,2% relied on communal taps and 2,5% relied on neighbours’ taps. A seemingly small percentage – 3,1% of households – still had to fetch water from “rivers, streams, stagnant water pools, dams, wells and springs”. That is potentially more than 1,5-million people, effectively locked out of their constitutional rights.
Thanks to technology, these are facts we cannot escape during the revamped Water Week, running from 15 to 22 March this year. It culminates in the United Nations-designated World Water Day on 22 March, when we will no doubt hear far more, according to the Department of Water and Sanitation, “about taking action to decisively deal with water challenges facing the globe”.
The Department marks all of March as National Water Month, and has chosen as its theme this year “Valuing Water”.
“The National Water and Sanitation Master Plan is very explicit about the state of our infrastructure, that it is inadequate and it needs total overhaul,” it acknowledges. “Last year, the Department presented a report before the Portfolio Committee in Parliament that South Africa loses billions of rands due to water leaks as a result of infrastructure that is a state of decay.”
However, the primary action at present seems to be the promotion of the value of water rather than addressing the decay. It may no longer be sinister, but it remains propaganda.
Go to the next page to read about how IoT is set to transform how water is managed.
While the Department uses the technology of the Internet to share its messaging, precious little use is made of the technology that could present a stopgap to this decay. It’s called the Internet of Things, and it comprises networks of sensors and other devices that collect information from the environment and allow them to be analysed online.
For example, IoT.nxt, a subsidiary of the Vodacom Group, has devised and installed two IoT technology solutions in South Africa this year so far, to improve water resource management.
“The introduction of IoT technology to better manage water infrastructure has the potential to enhance efficiencies across the entire water supply chain,” says Richmond Nkambule, who heads business development and sales, at IoT.nxt.
The first project, rolled out at the start of the year at a rural municipality, provides a real-time view of its water infrastructure, allowing it to monitor faulty meters and accurate consumption. Maintenance teams receive instant alerts via email or SMS about faults, including the GPS location of the meter, its status, flow rates and consumption.
The success of the project, of course, depends on the municipality’s will and capability to deploy maintenance teams. As has been seen in many municipalities, that is low on officials’ lists of priorities. But it’s not for want of trying by the likes of Vodacom, and the more visionary stakeholders are joining the cause.
Says Peter Malebye, managing executive for IoT at Vodacom Business, “South Africa is one of the 30 driest countries in the world. Increasingly, municipalities and other utility service providers are looking to innovative end-to-end connected solutions that enable utility operations like water and electricity to run more efficiently, reliably, safely, and cost-effectively. Our modem-driven, end-to-end software solution helps clients to implement advanced state-of-the-art analytics, revenue assurance and protection, and smart pre-payment to improve utilities’ operational performance.”
The second solution seems better destined for success: a Smart Water Storage Management Solution, which has been installed at a large pharmaceutical company in Johannesburg. It is intended to drive efficiencies, reduce risk, and help create water security within an office park. It provides a complete view of water levels in eight water tanks, as well as of water pump statuses, and sends alarms to the facilities manager when municipal water stops running.
“The use of technology, with other initiatives such as greater focus on the treatment and re-use of wastewater, can dramatically improve the threatened water security situation around the world,” says Nkambule. “Our next focus is on solutions for agriculture, a major consumer of water globally. Our agriculture application is in the final stages of development, and we are aiming at testing and then launching it in the second quarter of the year.”
Go to the next page to read about South Africa’s other water challenge.
It is not only a South African challenge. Even the world’s most powerful economy wrestles with the issue. In a 2017 study, the World Resources Institute (WRI) found that 22-billion litres of treated water were lost per day in the USA due to leaky pipes.
You don’t have to imagine how much worse it is in South Africa: the CSIR has done it for you. It reported in 2018 that as much of a third of the country’s water supply is lost due to leakage and aging infrastructure.
“Also, South Africa continues to deal with a dire energy shortage which means water infrastructure must operate in an optimised and sustainable manner,” says Jacques Squire, water and wastewater segment for Southern Africa at Schneider Electric.
“Financially strained local municipalities must also heavily invest in their water infrastructure to upgrade and maintain it, unfortunately, in some instances, very little or no maintenance is done on plant and water networks.”
Use of technology, he says, must be intentional and form part of a cohesive system of processes.
“For example, installing a new automation system is a good place to start but must, for example, be implemented in tandem with effective processes, designed to measure and improve operational value in real time.”
Such solutions may mean that future Water Months will be able to focus as much on success stories as on national disgrace. And make for school projects that are truly inspiring.
* Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter on @art2gee