Water quality in South Africa

The CSIR gagged the group leader of its Water Resource Governance Systems, Dr Anthony Turton, by preventing him from delivering his keynote address on water management and water quality in South Africa. Here follows an excerpt of the banned presentation.

Three Strategic Water Quality Challenges
Now to deal with the title of this presentation – the identification of three strategic
water quality challenges that decision-makers need to now about (Turton, 2008b).
As a result of the fact that we have lost our dilution capacity, we are now faced
with an increasing water quality problem. This will be addressed through the
National Water Quality Science, Technology and Policy Support Program currently
under development, in terms of which there will be three highly specific focal points.
These are all based on three strategic challenges that decision-makers in both
government and the private sector are being confronted with on a daily basis (Turton,
2008b). These are the following:
Strategic Challenge No. 1:

National Quest for Sustainability. South Africa is one
of the few countries in the world that has legislated for sustainability in their national
Constitution. We therefore need to turn these noble words into actual deeds supported
by robust science. To this end the CSIR has already invested heavily in what is known
as Sustainability Science. We need to now turn that theory (Burns et al., 2006; Burns
& Weaver, 2008) into concrete science, technology and policy. In that process our
available scientific knowledge tells us that there are two major issues that are about to
burst into the board rooms of large corporations and into the corridors of government
power in Pretoria and Cape Town. These two issues are:
Acid Mine Drainage. Our entire national energy strategy is largely based on
coal as a feedstock. That dependence is complex and will not be easily
changed (Oelofse, 2008b), so we have to focus our attention in the quest to
develop sustainable solutions to AMD, both coal and gold-based. This is a
highly complex issue and can only be overcome by leveraging all of our SET
assets in a concerted and focussed National Strategic Program with all major
players in both the energy sector (coal-based AMD) and mining sector (goldbased
AMD) as fully-fledged partners. To do this we must move away from
the current posture of being on a quest to hold corporations legally liable for
legacy issues, because that drives them into defensive positions from which
cooperation is not possible. In this regard we are already learning from the
German experience after unification where similar challenges arose. We need
to build robust partnerships, both nationally and globally, to achieve this
objective. We also need to solve technical problems that result in “new water”
that is generated in a way that is both environmentally and economically
sustainable. The SET component of this challenge will need to be robust,
probably exceeding the combined capacity of all our existing research
institutions, meaning that cooperation and partnerships are an absolute
necessity. In this regard, the principle being applied is that the level of
ingenuity needed to solve a problem, exceeds the level of ingenuity that
created the problem in the first place. This means that by definition, no one
institution will be able to solve this perplexing problem alone. Partnerships,
and only partnerships working in a highly coordinated manner, will be capable
of achieving this strategic objective. Leadership for this process will be a
major challenge, given the complexities of the issue, the degree of
transdisciplinarity needed to find viable solutions and the level of political and
commercial sensitivities involved. The decision to appoint and mandate an
appropriate person for this leadership role will thus be pivotal to the prognosis
for any future success.
Eutrophication. South Africa, already highly water constrained, is now also
faced with levels of eutrophication that are almost unprecedented globally.
Left alone this will slowly poison our waters, rendering them useless for future
economic development plans and driving up production costs for various
industries, further undermining the South African economy. This also has
major implications for a national population that already has a high level of
people with compromised immune systems (Ashton & Ramasar, 2002). The
science underpinning this was lost when the transition to the mixed funding
model occurred (see Figure 1) (Van Vuuren, 2008). We need to rebuild that
capacity as a matter of national priority and in this regard the recent decision
by the WRC to revive the fight against eutrophication is to be welcomed and
fully supported (Van Vuuren, 2008).
Strategic Challenge No. 2:

National Quest for Human Health. South Africa has a
number of health-related challenges (Hunter, 2003; Offringa et al., 2007). One of the
most notable is that associated with the scourge of HIV/AIDS that has left a
substantial portion of our population with a compromised immune system (Ashton &
Ramasar, 2002). Overlaid onto this is a developmental legacy that has exposed large
portions of the human population to heavy metal and radionuclide contamination
arising from more than a century of gold mining, much of which was largely
unregulated (Adler et al., 2007a; 2007b). This has many ramifications, which in my
professional opinion, have not yet been unravelled in any concerted way. So, if we are
to get serious about the science we do, we are going to have to show leadership in this
regard (Turton, 2008b). This means focussing on the following known problem areas:
Microcystins. South Africa has a microcystin load in our water storage
impoundments that is amongst the highest in the world. The last serious
science we did on this topic was in the decade before the start of the collapse
noted in Figure 1. We need to rebuild that national capacity (Van Vuuren,
2008), specifically with respect to high confidence studies of human beings
that might have been exposed to chronic doses of microcystin. That work will
be costly, complex and politically sensitive, but we cannot allow these factors
to cause us to waiver. No high confidence studies have been done and this is
bordering on the criminally negligent if we do not address this issue as a
matter of national priority. We need to know if microcystins are causing
human health problems (Hunter, 2003; Humpage et al., 2000; Ueno et al.,
1996), specifically in communities that are immune-compromised, and then
design intervention strategies based on this new robust science.
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals. South Africa also has a growing problem
with endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), driven largely by our loss of
dilution. This means that EDCs are being recycled without being removed.
This leads to concentration and bioaccumulation, so our focus needs to be on
understanding the fate and pathways in order to design appropriate
interventions, both technological and policy-related.
Partially Metabolized Medication. Given our high HIV/AIDS rate, South
Africa has a growing anti retro-viral (ARV) load, which passes like any other
medication, through the body in partly metabolized forms. This means that we
are going to be seeing higher levels of ARV in our rivers, which by
implication means that these complex chemical compounds will be entering
the human population over time, either through the drinking water stream or
via produce that has been irrigated with contaminated water. This specific
South African issue is nested in a bigger technical problem known as
Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCP’s), which is a growing
global concern, but is sufficiently unique to warrant strategic attention on its
own. We need to develop the science to understand this better, because
nowhere else in the world is there a coincidence of loss of dilution and high
levels of ARV use as in this country. This is clearly a national priority that has
major political implications. This science might even be a world first, but it is
certainly a national strategic priority in which we will have to take the lead.
Radionuclide and Heavy Metal Contamination. As a result of more than a
century of largely unregulated gold mining, we now have a legacy of heavy
metal and radionuclide contamination in rivers flowing out of most gold
mining areas. We also have a high population density living in close daily
contact with dust and sediment arising from mine tailings dams (large portions
of SOWETO and the East and West Rand residential complexes are located on
land that in most developed countries would be considered to be
contaminated). South Africa has never done a high confidence study of offmine
populations to determine what the impact has been from chronic
exposure to heavy metals and radionuclides (CSIR, 2008). This will be
complex and costly, but we need such a study as a matter of national urgency.
Strategic Challenge No. 3:

National Quest for Climate Change Adaptation. Given
that our water resources have already been fully allocated, and in many cases overallocated,
we have no more buffer capacity. This means that global climate change
has very specific implications for us as a ‘nation’ to which we have not yet developed
an adequate response (Hunter, 2003). Therefore we need to start by focussing on the
following key areas of strategic importance:
Cyanobacteria. While Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” tells us to
be afraid of sea level and temperature rise in the future, our own science is
showing us that we are being threatened by toxic microcystins produced by
cyanobacteria at present (Harding & Paxton, 2001; Oberholster & Ashton,
2008) to which we have no known solution. The future is already here and
Al Gore’s movie is merely causing us to take our eye off the ball, because
there is tentative evidence that cyanobacteria population dynamics are
influenced, at least in part, by changing ambient temperatures in our water
bodies (Hunter, 2003). We therefore need to revive the National
Eutrophication Program that collapsed at the end of the 1980’s (Van Vuuren,
2008) (see Figure 1) in order to understand the exact linkages between climate
change and cyanobacteria. Current indicators are that there is a link, but we
need to drill down in greater detail to truly understand this with a higher
degree of certainty.
Dilution Capacity. Given that South Africa has lost its dilution capacity, we
need to understand exactly what climate change will do to our national water
resource that is so vital to our economic and social survival (Turton, 2008b).
More specifically will future coal combustion, in the face of reduced
precipitation, mean an increase in acid rain? What will this do to our
agricultural production capacity? How will this change soil chemistry? What
will the impact be on rivers and wetlands already under stress? Will this cause
an increased mobilization of radionuclides and heavy metals? How will this
impact on EDCs? Will this trigger additional eutrophication as iron and
phosphate is mobilized from sediments? These are all complex questions that
need a focussed and concerted scientific effort to answer reliably.
Ecosystem Thresholds. Given that so much of our current effluent streams
enter aquatic ecosystems often through terrestrial ecosystems, we need to
understand their dynamics better, specifically with regard to their assimilative
capacity as environmental sinks for heavy metals, radionuclides, EDCs, ARVs
and the myriad of chemical pollutants we discharge daily. More specifically,
we need to know if climate change will nudge any of these aquatic ecosystems
across thresholds, pushing them into catastrophic collapse, such as that already
in existence in the Hartebeespoort and Roodeplaat Dam systems.