Plugging Leaks
As I write this, it rains. And rains and rains and rains. Finally. Living on Stone’s Hill makes me wholly dependent on the generosity of the skies for my water and I haven’t been able to do a load of laundry in weeks.
Plugging Leaks
As I write this, it rains. And rains and rains and rains. Finally. Living on Stone’s Hill makes me wholly dependent on the generosity of the skies for my water and I haven’t been able to do a load of laundry in weeks.
I’ve been eking out my last drops and replenishing supplies with municipal water-truck deliveries.
Bless those stalwarts in the Fire Department and City Engineers office! Without their trucks none of us on the hill would survive long absences of rain.
And just as I watch my drainpipes like a hawk to make sure there are no leaks and every drop is collected, the SA government now it seems is doing the same.
Well they’re not watching my drainpipes, but they are closely monitoring municipal water loss through leakage. It’s all part of a recently launched initiative by the Department of Water Affairs called “No Drop”.
The Department will be performing “No Drop” assessments as part of their efforts to “increase water-use efficiency and to reduce leakages from the water supply networks” as stated in their press release earlier this month.
The “No Drop” assessments are being implemented across all municipalities in South Africa from October 2013 to March 2014 and the results will be released thereafter.
They form part of a multi-pronged strategy by the minister of water affairs, who is implementing a variety of measures that reduce water losses and leakage.
This also includes increasing water efficiency and raising public awareness around water demand and usage. The “No Drop” assessments will be conducted over the next two years to generate detailed research on water use and loss within all municipalities. These reports will be combined with the “Blue Drop” government initiative to assess drinking water quality.
Both projects’ findings will be made available to the public.
Citizens will thus be able to view the performance and rating of their local government, both in terms of water quality and management of its water resources.
For a water-scarce country such as ours, which by the Department’s own admission is plagued by “ageing infrastructure, inadequate maintenance and repairs of existing infrastructure, long response time to water leaks/bursts, technical competency shortcomings in municipalities and a culture of water wastage”, this can only be a good thing.
For now though, let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!
Population bubble
My grandmother was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1905. She was one of about 110 000 residents of what has now become a modern metropolis of 2 million people.
Indeed, when she was born, there were only about 1.6 billion humans on Earth.
Today we’re up to 7.2 billion. The global population has more than doubled… twice.
The next billion will have arrived in less than a dozen years. By 2050 there’ll be just over 9.5 billion people on the planet if we keep adding a million people every day. That’s a lot of humanity using up finite resources.
Of course, population is always a touchy subject. Procreation is akin to life.
So what do we do about it?
Countdown, by Alan Weisman, whose first best-selling book was The World Without Us, looks for answers.
To write it, Weisman travelled to more than 20 countries and met with experts whom he asked crucial questions such as how many people can the planet handle? How robust must the Earth's ecosystem be to assure our continued existence? What other species are essential to our survival? How do we create a stable, optimum population, and economic model that facilitates real prosperity without endless growth?
Most important, Weisman does not support coercive population control a la China’s one-child policy.
Ultimately, his solution to a large extent relates to the empowerment of women through education and access to contraception.
As one of seven children, who after being educated decided to only have two of her own, my granny would agree.
Happy summer, Makana! Go out there and sing freelyv in the rain!
