Area of Study
The study for the Continuation of Water Requirements and Availability Reconciliation Strategy for the Mbombela Municipal Area, including the Crocodile and Sabie River Systems was commissioned in 2017 and will be concluded in 2020. This study follows on the Reconciliation Strategy for the Mbombela Municipal Area which was developed in 2014. The Reconciliation Strategy for the Mbombela Municipal Area (2014) was developed with the main objective to identify steps that need to be taken to ensure that enough water will, in the foreseeable future, be available to meet domestic and industrial water requirements in the Mbombela Municipal Area. The Reconciliation Strategy provided recommendations for the sequence of management and structural interventions required to maintain acceptable assurances of supply to domestic, and industrial water users in the Mbombela Local Municipality, while at the same time ensuring that the Ecological Water Requirements (Reserve) and agreed international
cross-border flows, lawful irrigation and the needs of users downstream are not compromised.
For the Reconciliation Strategy to be implemented and to remain relevant to properly fulfil its purpose into the future it has to be dynamic, hence the water balance situation needs to be continuously monitored and the strategy has to be regularly updated and maintained. This ensures that intervention planning can be implemented considering any changes that may have an impact on the projected water balance.
Outcomes of the 2014 Reconciliation Strategy
The reconciliation of water requirements with the available water resources within the Mbombela Municipal Area were evaluated for eight water demand centres in the Mbombela Local Municipality namely, Nelspruit (including Mataffin, the Agricultural College and Matumi Golf Course), White River Town (including White River Country Estate and Rocky Drift), Hazyview, Nsikazi North, Nsikazi South, Karino Plaston Corridor, Matsulu and smaller centres (Kaapschehoop, Ngodwana and Elandshoek).
Interventions that were identified for reconciling increasing water requirements of the different demand centers with the current supply included:
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Water Conservation / Water Demand Management (WC/WDM);
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Removal of invasive alien plants;
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Reallocation of water (pending DWS approval);
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System Operating Rules for Primkop Dam and other upstream dams (yield optimisation);
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Groundwater development;
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Rain and fog harvesting; and
Regional Dam: three possible schemes were identified in the Crocodile River East Catchment of which the following two were recommended for further feasibility investigations:
- Mountain View Dam on the Crocodile River East,
- Strathmore Off-channel Storage Dam
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http://www.dws.gov.za/iwrp/Mbombela/Documents/Mbombela_Final_Recon_Strat_V0.pdf
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