Eastern Cape municipalities are turning to the sea to end their water shortages, with the Amathole District Municipality the latest to attempt to fund the building of a desalination plant.
Aspire, the municipality’s development agency, has been tasked with drawing up a plan.
The Buffalo City and Nelson Mandela Bay metros and the Ndlambe Municipality have all considered desalination projects to address their water shortages.
According to the agency, the ADM project will cost R4.5bn from start to completion.
This includes the costs of a feasibility study and purchase of land for the plants.
Kei Mouth and Hamburg are the two areas proposed for the plants.
When completed, both are expected to produce between 20 and 25 megalitres a day.
These are considered to be small plants and are the most common in SA, according to Jay Bhagwan, an expert in the field working for the Water Research Commission.
The agency’s chief operations officer, Xhantilomzi Nyaba, said it had already applied to the Industrial Development Agency to get the project approved and registered.
“Amathole has challenges of water across the district so one of our plans [is] to deal with that issue of water.
“[Additional] to what we are doing with the infrastructure rollout inland, we decided to look at other alternative sources of water, that is where the issue of desalination plants came about,” he said.
He said construction of the plants would unlock economic development in the district.
The agency would seek private sector funding for the project because it did not have the budget.
An appointed company would fund part of the construction and run the plants. It would recoup its money through sales of water.
“We are looking for a company which is going to do a feasibility study, environmental impact assessment, and all of that,” Nyaba said.
The agency had already submitted an early business case for the project with the IDC.
Nyaba said the plant in Hamburg would service areas like Ngqushwa and the Raymond Mhlaba Municipality while the one in Kei Mouth would service areas in the Mnquma municipality.
When the project was approved and funding was available, the agency would give itself between three and five years to deliver water to ADM residents.
“It will make a huge difference because if we can’t get water from rain, if we don’t get water from [our current] infrastructure, then this must be added to the mix so that we have a hybrid solutions for water provision,” he said.
They had done some research on desalination, including visiting the plant in Port Alfred.
Nyaba said they had noticed that most companies which assembled desalination plants were based abroad but they were not averse to working with them.
Amathole is known for its water challenges, ranging from villages that have no infrastructure to areas which experience water cuts.
In 2023, residents protested in Fort Beaufort over interrupted water supply.
Areas like Mncwasa in Elliotdale have also had water challenges.
In 2022, this publication reported about families in the Mnquma municipality’s ward 19 who were forced to draw water from rivers and streams because, despite having taps installed in some parts, they had not seen a drop of water since the installation in the late 1990s.
Mnquma municipal spokesperson Loyiso Mpalantshane said news of a proposed desalination plant to service residents under the municipality was welcome.
He said they had numerous complaints from residents regarding access to water and they usually directed them to ADM, which was the water service authority for their area.
Mnquma had also experienced a drought which, in 2020, caused the Xilinxa Dam to run dry and forced a number of residents to go without sufficient water.
“It would be a welcome relief to have that facility because it’s going to add to the efforts to address water shortages within the [municipality] at large,” Mpalantshane said.
The Aspire desalination project is set to be the third in the province.
Port Alfred, under the Ndlambe municipality was the first, with plans announced in 2019 for what was originally a two megalitre-a-day desalination plant on the banks of the Kowie River, but it has been bedevilled by problems from the outset and has landed the municipality in court.
The Coega Development Corporation has also mooted a 60-megalitre-a-day desalination plant to supply the industrial area and Nelson Mandela Bay with drinking water.
In 2023, the Daily Dispatch reported that the Buffalo City Metro had spent R1.5m on a feasibility study for its own desalination plants.
The study, set to be completed by the end of the current financial year, is focused on three sites — the East London Industrial Development Zone, Esplanade and East London Harbour North.
A report to council at the time said the possible sites for a permanent plant were BCM-owned land at the IDZ and the parking area next to the Orient Theatre building.
Speaking about Aspire’s ADM project, Bhagwan said the size of the two plants meant that they could be set up speedily but plants that size were costly.
“The smaller plants are easy to roll out ... It’s very quick to assemble and put together a train of processes and deploy it out quite quickly, that’s the advantage they have over the big plants that would require more civil works and those kinds of things.
“But the global experience is that small plants are more costly to run than the bigger plants.
“The bigger plants give you economies of scale, that’s the lesson that is coming out,” he said.
Bhagwan said the more ideal situation for Aspire would be to get a private company to supply, operate and maintain the plants.
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