Don Degen warns SA to reduce demand for water
Thursday, 12 August 2010 |  Business Day  |  1 comment

While SA faced water supply constraints and suffered from rainfall that was less than half the world average, it was not alone in having to manage water supply issues, experts said last week.Although SA faced a supply deficit of 6% by 2013 and 11% by 2019, it was 10 years too late to implement purely supply-side solutions, said Don Degen, utilities operations manager for the city of Kelowna, in Canada.

SA needed to formulate strategies to reduce demand for water.

However, he said, SA had struggled to implement the demand management plans it had already tried to institute.

was speaking at the Sustainable Water conference held recently in Pretoria.

Six of the issues SA was grappling with were also important concerns for North America, Mr Degen said: a mismatch between supply and demand, a failure to achieve demand reduction targets, decaying infrastructure, deteriorating water quality, the loss of essential skills, and undervaluing water.

With 20% of the world's available freshwater resources, and just 0,5% of the world's population, Canada had had a false sense of security with regard to water resources, Mr Degen said.

In 1996, Kelowna city, with average per-capital water consumption of 1 000 litres a day in peak periods - the highest demand in the world - was forced to implement demand-side management.

By last year, the average consumption per resident had been reduced to 444 litres of water a day, and despite a 35% increase in the population, only 2% more water was being delivered to Kelowna.

"Understanding where the water was used helped us to set priorities and achievable goals," he said. Kelowna had invested in public education and customer engagement to find out why people used so much water and how demand could be reduced.

Up to 80% of water in the summer was being used for garden irrigation. Low water rates meant there was little incentive to conserve water.

The city legislated the use of low-flow plumbing fixtures in new developments and raised the cost of water, discouraging excessive consumption. But Mr Degen said one-on-one interaction with consumers had been the most significant part of Kelowna's success.