However, departmental water resource managers have concerns about the deteriorating state of the country’s estimated 223 state and municipal water storage facilities.

Working in a comparative prediction mode for the period October 2020 to March 2021, the DWS team reports that only 55% of the 2747 water monitoring stations in the country were operational at the time of making their assessments.

They’ve worked extensively from meteorological data. In 2020 South Africa experienced the fifth warmest year on record since 1951.

The surface areas of the country will continue to experience a warming trend of 0.16 degrees Celsius per decade. Problem is, the warmer the surface, the more water is lost to evaporation at surface water storage facilities.

Good news is the persistent drought conditions are bound to subside in the Northern Cape, the Western Cape’s Karoo region, the western Free State, North West Province and Northern Cape.

DWS water resource planners are now more focused on climate change. Only in  2009 did the planners of the Integrated Vaal River System incorporate preliminary assessments of climate change in planning the country’s most sophisticated water transfer scheme.

Now climate change receives more attention. Globally there is growing international interest in the United Nations’ COP 26 global climate talks in Glasgow in October-November 2021.

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth report foresees an ominous future. We need to reduce our methane emissions into the atmosphere. Despite the COVID pandemic there has only been a marginal and temporary drop in anthropogenic atmospheric pollutants.

In the Northern Hemisphere Europe and Asia have experienced severe floods, while the northern United States and parts of Canada faced excruciating heatwaves.

These fit in with IPCC predictions. The northern parts of the globe will heat up while rains intensify. In the Southern Hemisphere the IPCC warns, we are prone to more heat and less rainfall.

Outlier events are evident in southern Africa. Tropical cyclone Eloise of 23 January 2021, wreaked havoc in Mozambique, also affecting parts of South Africa’s Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces.

We have to brace ourselves for similar events in future, the DWS report suggests. For Gauteng residents the Vaal River is a vital water resource. However, it is an artificial system.

Our water transfer and storage facilities are primarily managed to provide vitally important water to drive 50% of the country’s economy. As consumers we need to work carefully with water.

The American bio-hydrologist, Robert Morris, explains that we wrongly assume we have an ‘endless supply of water’. He favours consumers paying for water they use.

We must have an economic system that properly values the water. If not, the effective management of water remains a major challenge for water authorities, he says.

In the case of Gauteng a major obstacle to payment for water is the high rate of poverty. As more than 30% of Gauteng’s workers are now unemployed, the  water sector faces a daunting task to secure payments.

By 2050 our water situation could be more unpredictable. Limited water resources and insufficient infrastructure to maintain our aquatic ecosystem life in Gauteng, could be worse.

It is for this reason the DWS’s report on the anticipated weather conditions and impact on our water supplies is important.