National Water and Sanitation Master Plan, 2018

This plan focuses on managing water and sanitation by reducing water demand and increasing its supply, redistributing water for transformation, making effective water and sanitation services, regulating the water and sanitation sector, improving raw water quality and protecting and restoring ecological infrastructure. Another focus of the plan is to create an enabling environment for effective water sector institutions, managing data and information, ensuring financial sustainability, enhance research, development and innovation, among others. This Plan identifies that the country has a water crisis caused by insufficient water infrastructure maintenance and investment, recurrent droughts driven by climatic variation, inequities in access to water and sanitation, deteriorating water quality and a lack of skilled water engineers. The Plan identifies five strategic objectives to chart the future for water and sanitation management in the country, these include; a resilient and fit-for-use water supply; universal water and sanitation provision; equitable sharing and allocation of water resources; effective infrastructure management, operation and maintenance; and reduction in future water demand. To achieve these objectives require a significant paradigm shift that recognises the limitations of water availability, addresses the real value of water, ensures equitable access to limited water resources, delivers reliable water and sanitation services to all, focuses on demand management and alternative sources of water, considers the impacts of climate change and addresses declining raw water quality. The Plan proposes to develop and adopt water-less sanitation technology as the provision of waterborne sanitation is unsustainable, it further projects that by 2040, treated acid mine drainage and desalinated seawater will make a significant contribution to South Africa’s water mix, ground water usage will increase, and the over-reliance on surface water will reduce. The Plan identifies the following key actions; to develop, update and maintain reconciliation planning studies to achieve optimal water mix (surface water, groundwater, re-use and desalination, and incorporate climate change into studies); to develop a guideline for the protection, recharge, use and monitoring of groundwater; to integrate results of All Towns studies and reconciliation studies into sectoral plans (domestic, agriculture, energy, mining, industrial development, land reform and rural development); increase groundwater use (including artificial recharge) and re-use of water; develop strategic water resources infrastructure, among others.