18 Nov 2019

Several governance and legislative instruments are being developed towards the provision of clean water and safely managed sanitation.

Delivering the State of the Nation Address in Parliament on November 18, President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi said government remained committed to the provision of potable water and sanitation services. 

He said in support of this endeavour, the 1968 Water Act and its related pieces of legislation were being reviewed.

Dr Masisi said the total water demand currently stood at 245 million cubic metres.

“The demand is expected to increase to 340 million cubic metres by 2035. 

The main water sources are surface water, groundwater and waste-water reuse. 

The water supply status is at 225 million cubic metres,” he added.

Dr Masisi said Botswana was consistently experiencing hydrological droughts that led to challenges in water security.

He said climate change uncertainty called for the need to put in place a water security strategy. 

“The strategy will include water conservation, reclamation and recycling, groundwater exploration, well fields expansion and mega transfer schemes such as Chobe- Zambezi, Lesotho Highlands. 

The utilisation of seawater from the Atlantic Ocean are the potential sources for water security,” he said.

President Masisi said at present, there were a number of water and sanitation infrastructure development projects that were being implemented. 

He said such included network rehabilitation, upgrading and refurbishment of systems as well as water conveyance pipelines from the already existing resources to demand areas.

“The optimisation of the North-South Water Carrier was completed in June 2019. 

The objective of the project was to improve water supply for the greater Gaborone area by increasing the water flows from Mmamashia Water Treatment Plant from 700 litres per second to a minimum of 1 000 litres per second and a maximum of  1 350 litres per second. 

Currently, the pump station is delivering 1 200 litres per second,” he said.

Dr Masisi said efforts towards waste-water reuse were done through the rehabilitation of the Glen Valley Treatment Plant and the Glen Valley Reclamation projects. 

He said the rehabilitation of the Glen Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant was to ensure compliance of treated sewage with the requirements of reclamation.

“The project will bring back the Glen Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant to a treatment capacity of 90 million litres per day. 

The project commenced in May 2019 and is to be completed by April 2020,” he added. 

Dr Masisi noted that the Glen Valley Water Reclamation was at feasibility stage. 

He said the project was intended to reclaim 60 million litres a day to augment water supply in the greater Gaborone area.

Dr Masisi said sustainable groundwater supply capacity stood at 96 million cubic metres,   but presently the amount of groundwater use was 28 million cubic metres, which was approximately 30 per cent of sustainable supply capacity.

“Efforts to optimise the utilisation of groundwater resources are done through projects such as the construction of the 100km pipeline from Masama well fields to Mmamashia, which is meat to increase water supply to the southern part of Botswana by 64 million litres per day,” he said. Ends