Desalination plant must come quick

IF NamWater’s Mile 6 desalination plant is not in operation by 2013, the Erongo region’s coastal communities and large industries will face a lengthy water crisis.

‘We will then have to stop supply of water to the mining and fishing industries and allocate the little water we have to the municipalities and communities,’ Dr Kuiri Tjipangandjara, General Manager: Engineering and Scientific Services at NamWater, said. ‘We need to see the urgency in getting this project off the ground. Delayed decisions will have serious socio-economic implications. If we realise the losses we face, we might want to speed up the process.’He said mining has ‘tremendous spin-offs’ for the region and the country.’If there’s no water, no mining can take place, then development will be stagnated,’ he said.Currently, the main sources of water for the region are the Omdel and Kuiseb aquifers. NamWater has a permit to extract nine million m³ of water a year from the Omdel, but the permit expires at the end of 2010. This aquifer’s sustainable yield capacity is five million m³.’We are currently over-extracting. This can cause irreversible damage to the aquifer,’ he said. ‘Thus prolonged over-extraction with low recharge can result in seawater intrusion. Once this takes place, we can forget about the aquifer.’Another five million m³ is being extracted from the Kuiseb aquifer. The total water extraction now is about 14 million m³ from both sources, on par with the demand from the coastal communities and the two major mines, Rössing and Langer Heinrich.The situation is considered ‘critical’, and when NamWater’s permit to extract from Omdel expires, the situation will be considered a ‘quarter-past-midnight’ scenario as supply will drop by four million m³.