{"id":6191,"date":"2019-10-29T08:34:51","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T05:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6191"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:38","slug":"panic-over-water-in-south-africas-economic-hub-is-misplaced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/10\/29\/panic-over-water-in-south-africas-economic-hub-is-misplaced\/","title":{"rendered":"Panic Over Water In South Africa\u2019s Economic Hub Is Misplaced"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By\nMike Muller<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\nhas been a hot, dry October in much of the interior of South Africa. And the\nrains have started later than usual. So it was not surprising that alarm bells\nwent off when it was announced that the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.water-technology.net\/projects\/lesotho-highlands\/\">Lesotho\nHighlands Water Project<\/a>&nbsp;tunnel system, which supplies water to some of\nSouth Africa\u2019s biggest cities, would be closed for maintenance for two months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These\nfears were inflamed by appeals by local authorities in Gauteng province, the\ncountry\u2019s economic hub, to use water sparingly. Residents had already seen the\nrecent example of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2018\/may\/04\/back-from-the-brink-how-cape-town-cracked-its-water-crisis\">Cape\nTown\u2019s water crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gauteng\nand the surrounding region gets its water from the 14 interconnected dams of\nthe&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www6.dwa.gov.za\/Vaal\/\">Integrated Vaal River System<\/a>.\nSome of these are in Lesotho, South Africa\u2019s mountainous neighbour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nLesotho dams provide over 25% of the water supplied by the Integrated Vaal\nRiver System. So a permanent loss of supply from Lesotho would indeed cause\nshortages for millions of South Africans. But this&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sanews.gov.za\/south-africa\/lesotho-highlands-water-project-tunnel-shutdown-maintenance\">long-planned\nmaintenance<\/a>&nbsp;merely stores the water in Lesotho\u2019s dams for a few\nmonths, to be released later. There are far greater risks emerging in the\nIntegrated Vaal River System that need to be addressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite\nthe current heat wave, there is in fact no danger of an immediate water\nshortage in the Gauteng cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria. Specialists\nconcluded very recently that no water use restrictions would be required in the\nVaal River System this summer. This followed a detailed review of the state of\nthe dams in the system mapped against possible future rainfall patterns and\ncurrent consumption levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But\nthere are issues that residents of Gauteng and surrounding areas should be\nconcerned about. Specifically, are the authorities responsible for managing\nwater supplies keeping their eye on the ball? And are they ensuring that plans\nto protect the province from shortages over the next six years will be\nimplemented on time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/panic-over-water-in-south-africas-economic-hub-is-misplaced-125742\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Mike Muller It has been a hot, dry October in much of the interior of South Africa. And the rains have started later than usual. So it was not&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}