EDITOR – One reads with some incredulity the fact that the eThekwini Municipality has started installing water restrictors and wonders to what extent this proposal has been thought through.
Surely the known 40 per cent water loss should have been addressed first, since it makes the 15 per cent customers are asked to save almost pointless. If customers could save 15 per cent, it would make the equivalent water loss increase to nearly 50 per cent.
The suggestion that those ‘with means’ should put in rainwater tanks is interesting. The cost of the average rainwater tank is in excess of R1 per litre capacity. If one includes the pump to pump the water to toilet cisterns, the price jumps to around R15 per litre capacity. Even if one only used five kilolitres per month, the cost of the number of tanks required would be utterly prohibitive.
The reality is that toilet cisterns, geysers, washing machines and dishwashers will all still use exactly the same amount of water since they can only operate at pre-determined levels of water. The main effect of the restrictors will be to create some angst among the millions of domestic customers since it will take that much longer to have a shower.
One notes that it is mainly domestic customers who are penalised. The refineries, for example, will continue to use millions of litres of potable water daily, which is then dumped in the ocean.
One further wonders what the cost of the 80-odd contractors is, not to mention the colossal loss of water incurred while fitting the restrictors. Once the meter is disconnected, water floods at full pressure uncontrollably until the washer is fitted and the pipe recoupled.
The final point of wonder is the statement, “The restrictors have GPS so that when the drought we are faced with is over they can be removed.”
Really? I wonder how the GPS is fitted to each washer. It must be awfully miniature.
Whatever the future, with the water levels so low, now might be the time to get the bulldozers in and deepen the dams, probably a lot less costly than building new dams.
CA Brockway
???
