ETHEKWINI Mayor Cyril Xaba has outlined urgent strategies to combat the city's ongoing water crisis, highlighting the need for immediate action and effective management of water resources.
He pledged to address the water losses and improve service delivery so that water could be accessible to everyone.
He said the water crisis would remain a permanent feature on the agenda at executive committee (Exco) meetings until the situation had improved.
Xaba spoke at an Exco meeting on Tuesday and called on the city to “ramp up its plans to address the challenges of non-revenue water as a matter of urgency.”
He said water losses had proved to have a debilitating effect on the City’s ability to generate income and operate a viable water service.
“It weakens the city’s ability to improve repairs, operations, infrastructure maintenance, investments and improving customer responsiveness as well as the quality of service.
“In July 2024, the then Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda and exco members met with uMngeni-uThukela Water Board (UUWB) chairperson, Advocate Vusi Khuzwayo and senior management.
“They updated the city on their discussion with the officials on the pending water curtailment at the time. They emphasised the point that the water demand on their system far exceeded the supply and that, as the water entity, they could not afford to supply more water. They were looking at the City adopting a two-pronged strategy,” Xaba added.
The strategy included that water leaks would be detected and fixed, and measures to impact on the reduction of average consumption per household was implemented.
“On their part, they would introduce water curtailment by progressively reducing abstraction by 108 megalitres per day over 12 months, starting from October 15, 2024.
“UUWB reiterated that the relationship between the city and the water entity was regulated by a bulk supply agreement signed in 2005, expiring in March 2025. The 2005 agreement did not anticipate the current challenges. The city abstraction was about 1500 megalitres a day when the contracted volumes were 1100 megalitres a day. The city was obviously drawing about 25% more than the contracted amount,” said Xaba.
At the time, UUWB warned that the city should brace itself for water reduction to the licenced volumes, over a period of 12 months.
“The city was tasked to produce a plan of action that would bring the demand down to the contracted volumes. We can achieve that if it corrects the imbalance in the system that continues to plague the optimisation of our water system.
“To highlight the impending water crisis, the total bulk water System Input Volume (SIV) for the 2019/20 financial year was 362,046,895 (kl/y). However, in the same period, the recorded consumer sales volume of water averaged at 177,340,525 (kl/y), accounting for 51% water loss, equating to a R1.7 billion loss in revenue.
“In analysing the water loss, the 2020 Water Balance Report, made concerning observations that apparent losses (illegal consumption and metering inaccuracies) amounted to 10.2%; while real losses (leaks on mains) amounted to 39,8%.
“And a negligible percentage attributed to un-billed authorised consumption (3,779,731 kilolitres per year), all together bring the non-revenue water to 51% for the 2019/20 Financial Year,” Xaba added.
In the last two financial years, the water utility lost R4,03 billion in sales, accounting for 468 010,665 kilolitre per annum (1 282 megalitres per day).
“Between the period 2017 and 2023, I have observed sharp contradictions that our consumer sales volumes have been decreasing even when there has been an increase in both service connections and system input volume to our water supply systems. Cash collections in eThekwini Municipality for water services declined from 97% in 2017/18 to 67% in 2022/23. This coincided with the sharp increase of non-revenue water from 30% in 2017 to above 50% in 2022, signalling a rapid deterioration of our system.
“This explains that there are serious leaks in our system, debunking a false narrative that there is an increase in water demand. Our scientists must guide us correctly. Yes, we must apply stricter water conservation and water demand management measures to dampen the uptake, but we need to rapidly step up our measures to combat pure water losses.”
Xaba said water losses directly affected the financial viability and sustainability of the service.
“The city must ramp up its own plans to address the challenges of non-revenue water as a matter of urgency. To this end, I have asked the city manager Musa Mbhele to present the water and sanitation turnaround strategy business plan in the near future. The plan must address the causes already identified in the studies conducted by our management, as well as the water and sanitation turnaround strategy. Let us divert our energies away from analysing the causes to rooting out the problem. Our people need water,” added Xaba.
He said the challenges that the water and sanitation business plan should include was detection and fixing of leaks.
“It must also include plans to meter all informal settlements, standpipes, and bulk meters for rural areas, so that the City can account for every kilolitre of water. Install meters to close to 100 000 unmetered properties, replace dysfunctional meters and domestic meters and replace large commercial/industrial meters that have outlived their value. It should also ensure sufficient meter stocks, improve effectiveness of metering and billing processes, including performance incentives and controls; and enforce credit control and debt management policies. The plan also needs to review and tighten meter reading contracts and contract management,” Xaba said.