11 Sep 2019

Water from the Kgalagadi underground water basin belt has proven to be too saline for livestock. 

Speaking during a stakeholder consultative forum in Tsabong on September 10, the Orange-Senqu River Commission (ORASECOM) Secretariat project coordinator, Mr Sibotwe Mwiya said a pilot project to de-salinate borehole water was planned for Kgalagadi South.

The pilot project, funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) - Global Environmental Facility (GEF) would be executed by ORASECOM in the next five years in one of the villages in Kgalagadi South, which is still to be selected.

He said if the project becomes successful, it would be replicated to other areas to help communities with drinking water.

The project is a trans-boundary initiative jointly executed by four Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states of; Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa.

The overall objective of the project, Mr Mwiya said, was to strengthen joint management capacity for implementation of the basin-wide Integrated Water Resource Management Plan and demonstrate environmental and socio-economic benefits of ecosystem-based approach to water resources management through the implementation of Strategic Action Programme priority actions in the Orange-Senqu River basin.

He explained that the Orange River starts from the Drakensberg Mountains of Lesotho and its basin extends into South Africa, Namibia and Botswana although in Botswana Limpopo and Nosop were dry. The river flows westwards through South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean, which borders Namibia.

Thus it was against this backdrop that a trans-boundary diagnostic analysis was done from 2007 to 2013 to identify the trans-boundary threats to the sustainable development and management of the water resources of the Orange-Senqu Basin.

Mr Mwiya highlighted that an Integrated Water Resources Management Plan was drawn to address the water shortage situation in the aforementioned SADC member states, which would be executed by the four governments using an ecosystem based approach.

For the project to efficiently serve its intended purpose, he said it would mean that the countries achieve common standards on de-salinated borehole water by the year 2024.

He added that legal instruments surrounding water from the Orange River member states should be seamless bearing a trans-boundary commonality.

Mr Mwiya said the water standards would be developed across the countries barring anyone from polluting the water resource, which would steam down to other member states through to the Atlantic Ocean.

For the pilot project to take off, a hydro-geologist at Department of Water and Sanitation, Mr Force Ramasuswana said they had identified boreholes with saline water in Kgalagadi South.

The proposed projects sites were at the BORAVAST cluster where they had identified hand dug wells which required to be reconstructed to be equipped with pumping machinery, a reservoir and watering troughs to enable it to provide water for livestock.

Borehole number BH10922 at Rappelspan was capable of yielding 5 000 litres per hour and required a desalination plant. ENDS