Water Boards

One of the river basins I spent a lot of time on was the Mngeni. My predecessors in the Planning Division had identified a site below Nagle Dam to increase the regulation of the river. The Durban Corporation was used being supplied under gravity via pipelines, hence the proposed location high up in the catchment. I looked for a site lower down with better storage capacity, but that would entail pumping towards the Durban Heights water purification works. The extra storage capacity and the lower capital cost by doing away with long aqueducts outweighed the cost of energy for pumping. The site under discussion was Inanda. My proposal was accepted by the DWA and eventually also by Durban and embodied in a White Paper. I was also instructed to plan for the increase in capacity of the Department’s Umlaas Road purification works. The latter served the “Border industries” in the area. In visiting the area and talking to various role players, I was struck by the fact that there were large areas between Pietermaritzburg and Durban that had no access to purified water. Potential customers shopped around, trying to get water either from Pietermaritzburg, from the DWA at Umlaas Road, from the Pinetown Water Services Corporation or from the Durban Corporation. Some had access to the raw water main from the Midmar Dam to Umlaas Road, others had no access to water whatsoever. The above main passed by the Ferncliff water purification works of Pietermaritzburg. I considered this an inefficient water supply situation and instead of proceeding with my work on the Umlaas Road extension, I went to see Doug Harris, town engineer of Pietermaritzburg, Don Macleod, then in charge of water and sanitation in Durban (later Town Engineer), the Chairman of the Pinetown WSC, various representatives of State Departments in the region, such as Indian Affairs, Coloured Affairs, Community Development and the KwaZulu Government, with a proposal that a Water Board be formed to rationalise the situation. I remember Don remarking to me:   ”I am talking myself out of a job, but it is the right idea.” Notwithstanding some resistance from some of them, I went ahead and prepared a report to the Secretary for Water Affairs, setting out my arguments and officially proposing the formation of the Mngeni Water Board. Certain water boards existed already: the Rand Water Board had its own Act, while the Phalaborwa Water Board had been formed in terms of the Water Act. However, for many years, the idea of water boards had more or less become obsolete. Notwithstanding that, my report was accepted and it was decided to call a meeting of all concerned parties. For this purpose, Chris Audie, at the time in charge of Administration and I took the train to Natal. The rest is history. Over time the Board took over the various Municipal and State works and proved a great success. The first Chairman was Roger Phélines, one of the Department’s top engineers. All this changed the policy of the Department towards water boards completely because since then, scores of other such boards were formed, such as the Mhlatuze Water Board (on which I served under the Chairmanship of the above mentioned Doug Harris), the Magalies WB, Bloemarea WB, the Freestate Goldfields WB, which took over the department’s Balkfontein purification works and pipelines etc. The policy was that DWA would regulate the rivers and look after major water transfer projects, the Water Boards would purify the water and distribute it in bulk and the Municipalities would supply it to its customers. At Mhlatuze, there was a similar situation as the Mngeni, with Empangeni and Richards Bay each doing its own thing in a common basin. Empangeni abstracted water from Lake Nsezi on a Mhlatuze tributary, while Richards Bay drew its water from the coastal lake called Mzingazi, which had a limited yield. I became involved in the planning of the Goedertrouw Dam to regulate the river and a weir and pumping station to supplement the yield of Lake Nsezi where a regional purification work was to be erected. Eventually the Mhlatuze WB constructed these works with the aid of Consulting Engineers and Contractors. It also took responsibility for two marine outfalls taking industrial waste from a fertiliser factory and from a paper mill to the ocean.