Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning
What measures have been accepted by the Western Cape Government to form part of the Province’s 15-year plan to manage water (a) supply and (b) demand?
The measures as developed and accepted as part of the 15-year Water Resilience plan to manage water can be categorized simply as follows:
- Technical interventions
These are measures/interventions recommended for implementation mainly by municipalities with support from provincial and national government departments. This would include aspects such as:
- Infrastructure development planning
- Diversification of water sources
- Water demand management
- Programmatic interventions
These are measures/interventions recommended for implementation by provincial and national government departments. This is related to aspects revolving around softer matters such as water conservation and awareness campaigns, policy, pricing, etc. These measures stem from the identification of interventions, actions, programmes, plans or projects from relevant provincial documents and prospective programmes. In reviewing and consolidating this information, 357 programmatic interventions are proposed and thematically categorized for consideration to implement. These interventions will be translated to programmatic responses and prioritised to inform the Western Cape Government’s medium-term planning for the 2024 MTEF planning horizon.
- Implementation support
This relates to the execution of the costed, prioritised sequenced
action plan, to be implemented by all 3 spheres of government (local/provincial/national). An initial prioritised list of infrastructure projects (per town and per municipality) required to build additional adaptive capacity and water resilience across the Province have been identified, to be incrementally realized between now and 2035/2036. This is an adaptive portfolio of potential projects which will be refined with municipalities routinely and will be maintained over the 15-year planning horizon. This will assist in informing the municipal water infrastructure planning, funding/financing, and alignment of all municipalities to the ultimate goal being water resilience/security. These projects include augmentation projects both from a water resource and a water infrastructure point of view and were based on an interrogation of the demand and supply side of the water cycle in all towns in the 24 local municipalities.
