Bibliography: pages 29-31. / Traditionally, an increase in water consumption and the corresponding decrease in the availability of water resources, has led to the development of new water augmentation schemes to store and transport water. Both in South Africa and internationally, dams, tunnels, reservoirs, inter-basin transfers, pipelines and weirs have offered effective but temporary solutions to an ever-increasing demand for water. However, as rivers, wetlands, waterways and canals start to show signs of collapse, emphasis is changing from the traditional water supply management to water demand management. Water demand management, which can be divided up into a number of related tools, looks at ways of using water more efficiently instead of exploring new sources of water. In this project, two water demand management case studies in South Africa were investigated and compared to international trends in water demand management. The ease studies were at the small towns of Hermanus and Stellenbosch both in the south western Cape. The Hermanus project consisted of 12 different water savings programmes, while the Stellenbosch project consisted entirely of a retrofitting programme. The Hermanus project has recently run to the end of its three-year duration, and has won numerous awards for the success it has achieved, while the Stellenbosch study took place four years ago and was on a smaller scale. Many aspects of the 12-point Hermanus programme were found to compare favourably with international WDM programmes and the project was well structured and run. However, some parts of the 12-point plan were not successful, and failed for various reasons. The Hermanus project received large amounts of support from various levels of governance, and questions remain whether the project would have been this successful without this support. The sustainability of this project has come under the spotlight in recent months. The Stellenbosch study was less successful than the Hermanus, but served to highlight the importance of some of the WDM tools and the combination of different tools in a water demand management programme. Stellenbosch has recently introduced a comprehensive Water Master Plan. It was concluded that the expertise and potential exists in South African to implement successful water demand management programmes, however the sustainability of the South African water demand management initiatives should be investigated.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/22082 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Hester, Andrew |
| Contributors | Winter, Kevin |
| Publisher | University of Cape Town, Faculty of Science, Department of Environmental and Geographical Science |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Master Thesis, Masters, MSc |
| Format | application/pdf |
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