African Wildlife & Environment Issue 85

CONSERVATION

MISSING: SOUTH AFRICA’S ABILITY TO MANAGE ITS RESERVOIR LAKES

One of the most common statements made about South Africa is that it is a country not blessed with an abundance of water. Our climate is arid, with an average annual rainfall of 450 mm that is both unevenly distributed and prone to high levels of evaporation...

Dr Bill Harding Photographs by author unless otherwise credited

Summer water bird count. Hartbeespoort Dam (2017). No waterbirds! (Photograph: John Wesson)

the annual water budget which continues to threaten the environmental health of both freshwater and coastal zone resources. Ominously, failed sewerage infrastructure has resulted in significant volumes of raw sewage never reaching treatment works, this apart from the fact that the majority of treatment works are dysfunctional. The consequential environmental harm is thus increasingly cumulative and substantial. This particular pollution problem, however, existed long before the infrastructure collapses of the past twenty years.

South Africa possesses only a single natural (fluvial) lake, and its coastal lake systems are generally unsuitable for irrigation and/or raw potable water supply. Hence, the social and economic well-being of South Africa’s 62 million people is dependent on water stored behind dams in reservoirs, as well as a not-insubstantial reliance on groundwater. However, annual return flows of inadequately treated wastewater effluents are twice the volume provided by groundwater. It is the nutrient and pollutant load borne by this substantial component of

27 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 85 (2024)