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S. Africans to Drink Recycled Toilet Water for The First Time

South Africans will drink recycled toilet water for the first time later this month when a reclamation plant in the drought-stricken town of Beaufort West starts operating.

The facility, built by Water & Wastewater Engineering, a Stellenbosch-based company, will treat effluent from the town’s sewerage-treatment works and pump purified water directly into its reservoir, Chief Executive Officer Pierre Marais said.

A water shortage forced Beaufort West to cut supplies for 36 hours at a stretch this month, Louw Smit, director of engineering services for the municipality, said in a statement on the City of Cape Town’s website on Dec. 14.

“This is the first time this type of technology has been used in South Africa,” Marais said in an interview on Dec. 15. “The plant was originally scheduled to take nine months to complete, but the municipality asked us to fast-track the project due to the severity of the drought.”

South Africa is the world’s 30th driest country, receiving an average of 450 millimeters (17.7 inches) of rainfall a year, compared with the global average of 870 millimeters, according to the government’s Department of Water Affairs and Forestry.

The drought in the southwestern Karoo region where Beaufort West is situated has reached “critical proportions,” according to Agri Wes-Cape, a farmers association.

“It’s developing into a crisis,” Carl Opperman, chief executive officer of the Cape Town-based group, said in a telephone interview. Some regions in the Karoo have been declared disaster areas, he said. Farmers mainly breed sheep in the region.

Empty Dam

The Gamka Dam, Beaufort West’s main source of water, dried up in October, the first time in the town’s 173-year history, Christopher Right, manager for technical services at the municipality, said in a telephone interview.

“Our surface water is non-existent at the moment,” Smit said. “The dam is completely empty. We’re solely reliant on groundwater from boreholes, donations of water in tankers and bottles from individuals and organizations who heed the call to provide water.”

The municipality was forced to cut supplies to the town’s 8,000 households, while tankers were used to supply them with 5 liters (1.32 gallons) of drinking water per day, Smit said.

The 24 million-rand ($3.5 million) facility in the town was funded by the Department of Water Affairs through a drought- relief grant, Smit said. The facility has a design capacity of about 2,000 cubic metres (70,629 cubic feet), though because of the drought it will only produce about a 1,000 cubic meters of potable water a day, Smit said.

More Facilities

Many such facilities will probably need to be built in the country in the future, Marais said.

“It had to happen in South Africa eventually,” he said. “Up until now it has been cheaper to develop boreholes, but when a drought hits, the boreholes let you down. The only other sustainable source of water is sewage effluent.”

Poverty, drought and increased industry are among factors that place stress on water systems in South Africa, where 12 percent of the population lacks access to piped or well water and 35 percent don’t have proper sanitation, according to the United Nations.

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The pureshowers team

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