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The Lephalale Municipal Area is located within the Limpopo River Catchment.
The Mokolo River (previously known as the Mogol River) and the Lephalale River
(also referred to as the Phalala River) traverse the Lephalale Municipal Area to the north,
with the Matlabas River running along the South Eastern Boundary and the Mogalakwena River
along the Eastern Boundary. All four (4) these afore-mentioned rivers feed into the Limpopo River,
which forms the North Western Border between South Africa with Botswana.
The Mokolo Dam (formerly known as the Hans Strijdom Dam) was constructed during
the late 1970's and it was completed in July 1980, to supply water to Matimba Power Station,
Grootegeluk Mine and Lephalale (formerly Ellisras) Municipality as well as for irrigation downstream
of the dam. Based on the water infrastructure, the current water availability and water use allows
only limited existing spare yield from the dam for future allocations for the anticipated surge in economic
development in the area.
The Waterberg Coalfields are located on large areas of the Mokolo River Catchment where,
according to preliminary estimates, almost half of South Africa's in-situ coal reserves occur. As such,
the Waterberg has long been considered the country's major coal resource for the future, especially
once the current mining areas in the Witbank-Highveld Coalfields of the Mpumalanga Province have been
depleted. Therefore major developments are planned for the Lephalale Area, and as a direct result thereof the water requirements
in the Lephalale Area will significantly increase over the next twenty (20) years.
A Water Demand Curve was produced using water requirement projections, which were provided by the large water
users (i.e. Eskom, Exxaro and Sasol). The projected water requirements for the Lephalale Municipal
Area were derived using existing households in Lephalale, known number of households per mine/plant/power
station (provided by the large users) and using unit water consumption volumes. The water requirement projections (forecasts) for the interim period (up to the end of 2014) were adjusted to reconcile the water requirements with the water availability (yield) in the Mokolo Dam.
Due to the limited availability of water in the Lephalale Area, the Department
of Water and Sanitation (DWS), formerly known as the Department of Water Affairs
and Forestry (DWAF), commissioned the Mokolo Crocodile (West) Water Augmentation
Project (MCWAP) Feasibility Study to investigate options to meet the future water requirements
of the Lephalale Area. The infrastructure options that were considered to augment water supply
to the Lephalale Area include the following:
- De-bottlenecking of an existing pipeline, owned by Exxaro;
- Phase 1:Augment the supply from Mokolo Dam,
and
- Phase 2:A Transfer Scheme from the Crocodile River (West) to the Lephalale Area.
At the time the DWAF divided the Scope of the MCWAP Feasibility Study into the following five (5) key modules:
- Project Coordination and Management Module;
- Technical Study Module;
- Environmental Management Module;
- Regional Economics Module, and
- Institutional and Financial Module.
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