The impact of socio-economic and human behavioural factors on the water of the Fontein Spruit catchment : a water management model study in a developing community

English: A world water crisis has been predicted as early as 1977 and since then, water professionals call this coming crisis to the attention of the world community at various conferences, summits and congresses. Recent assessments conducted for the United Nations and for the World Commission on Water indicated that almost half a billion people face water shortages in 29 countries and by 2025, almost two-thirds of the people are forecast to experience some form of water stress. Although this global water crisis tends to be viewed as a water quantity problem, water quality is increasingly being acknowledged as an important factor in water scarcity. In many developing countries water quality has become the principal limiting factor to water availability. The water quality situation in developing countries is highly variable reflecting social, economic and physical factors, state of development as well as climatic and geographical factors. In recent years several studies have been done in South Africa to determine the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of urban runoff and their impact on receiving waters. These studies suggest that there was a large difference in the type of pollutants that were observed in the receiving waters and that the major factor affecting the type of pollution is the type of development that the catchment is undergoing. The studies conducted on the high-density informal settlements imply that any form of urban development that includes shacks and/or informal houses will have a detrimental effect on the quality of urban runoff. Low-cost, high-density type urbanisation, with its informal housing and shack areas, is an inescapable part of South Africa and will continue to play a major role in this country for many years to come. In recent years, South Africa has experienced a massive increase in urbanisation, a large proportion of which takes the form of high-density, informal settlements that developed around existing metropolitan areas. Based on current patterns of growth, the extent of this form of urbanisation is predicted to treble within 20 years. This rapid growth of urban areas in South Africa has been accompanied by increased quantities of contaminated urban runoff and this, in turn, has accelerated the degradation of streams, rivers, lakes and estuaries. Urban runoff acts as an efficient transport mechanism for bacteria, viruses, nutrients, organic substances, heavy metals and other pollutants. Alone or in combination, these substances cause water quality problems, pose potentially serious risks to human- and environmental health through contact recreation and through the use of untreated water. Therefore, it is vitally important that the scientific and engineering society continue to study these urban catchments and to develop new and innovative ways of dealing with the problems associated with urban runoff. The study area provided a unique opportunity for the investigation, implementation and evaluation of an integrated water quality management programme, as it is a typical example of a community with rapid, largely uncontrolled, growth of low-cost, high-density housing developments. The research project was primarily aimed to gain a better understanding of the major causes of pollution in the study area, and once the principle contributing factors had been identified and investigated, a Water Quality Management Plan was developed. The research project was based on the assumption that water quality problems arising from developing communities can be managed using an integrated approach to ensure that the receiving water environmental objectives can be met on a sustainable basis and that the management practices and interventions to deal with pollution problems from developing communities can be sustained by addressing the socio-economic and human behavioural factors contributing to the problems. The Water Quality Management Plan is therefore an integrated plan addressing the management of water quality in the community in the study area, and also permits the extrapolation of the results to catchments with similar land use and human activities, locally as well as regionally.