Assessment of the Realization of the Fundamental Human Right to Water at the Umalalazi Local Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal

The aim of the study was to examine the municipal water resource governance and fundamental human rights to water in the UMlalazi Local Municipality of the KwaZulu-Natal Province. The study employed the post-positivist paradigm and closed ended questionnaires for collection of data. Stratified random sampling technique was used to sample 375 respondents, who were the households (head of households). Chi-square was used to determine relationships between the variables. The findings showed that most of the respondents strongly agreed that the 6kl of monthly water supply was not enough for meeting their domestic, consumptive, and hygiene needs. The municipality has a youthful population structure. Females were mostly affected by household water scarcity compared to their male counterparts. For the households, a day would be terribly difficult without this life-enabling commodity.

Assessment of Moringa oleifera Seeds as a Natural Coagulant in Treating Low Turbid Water

This research examined the coagulating potential of Moringa oleifera seeds in treating low turbid water. The active ingredient of the seeds was extracted using Soxhlet Apparatus with hexane as the solvent, after which the coagulant was dosed from 0.03g/L to 0.4g/L and used to treat a water sample with a low Turbidity of 18.4NTU, yielding an optimum value of 4.90NTU, an optimum dose of 0.03g/L and a turbidity reduction of 100% when compared with the World Health Organization (WHO) standard which is 5NTU. The study affirms Moringa oleifera as an effective natural coagulant in low turbid water treatment and it is recommended for household water treatments. Keywords— Hexane, Low turbid water, Moringa oleifera, Natural coagulant, Soxhlet apparatus

Mobilising the public to reduce household water use in Essex and Suffolk Water

The south-eastern region of the UK is facing water scarcity due to population growth and insufficient rainfall to meet household water demand. One of the regulatory requirements for water utilities is customer engagement to increase water efficiency. This chapter aims to identify key barriers to delivering engagement activities promoting household water efficiency and opportunities for improving practices in Essex & Suffolk Water (ESW) – a UK water utility operating in areas of serious water stress. A reflection is made on the water utility's Every Drop Counts (EDC) home visit campaign, an annual household water efficiency initiative, with particular focus on insights from its face-to-face delivery during Asset Management Plan 6 (AMP6, 2015−2020). The pilot of the EDC campaign's virtual initiative comprising of 66 virtual home visits is examined, with focus on drawing out lessons learned as Asset Management Plan 7 (AMP7, 2020−2025) begins during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Whilst the virtual home visit campaign was found to reach a broader customer base, save financial and environmental costs, and address the season and place constraints typically posed by the face-to-face campaign, fewer water saving devices were installed per property (4.4) compared to the face-to-face campaign (6.4), and calculating measured water savings was impossible due to customers failing to take water meter readings independently during the COVID-19 lockdown. Face-to-face home visits should therefore not mean an end to virtual home visits and vice versa, but rather serve as a twin-track strategy for delivering the campaign. Key strategies that emerged as improving face-to-face home visits in ESW include increasing the use of customer insight; varying the frame for water efficiency communications; improving the face-to-face engagement strategy; enhancing knowledge training; and creating feedback mechanisms between water efficiency managers and plumbers on the frontline. To better maximise virtual home visits, it is recommended that the behavioural change aspect of water efficiency education is delivered as a key and complementary aspect of appointments, and customers are better supported to self-install a wider range of water saving devices. This chapter bridges the gap between water management theory and practice by providing a better understanding of how practitioners are putting concepts into action on the ground and by so doing, contributes to building a learning culture in the global water sector.

Effects of hydrogen peroxide preoxidation on clarification and reduction of the microbial load of groundwater and surface water sources for household treatment

Household water treatment (HWT) technologies are a promising strategy for addressing the waterborne diseases burden. However, in order to be efficient, these are often limited to water quality and require it to not exceed a certain threshold of physicochemical and microbiological contamination. Additionally, some popular HWTs, as chlorination, are related to by-product formation. Preoxidation may improve source water quality, and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is an oxidant that has not been deeply explored in this specific application, so it could be an innovative approach to HWTs. We investigated effects of H2O2 preoxidation in two natural source waters (surface and groundwater), spiked with a high level of microorganisms. Clarification results suggested this pretreatment may improve life of HWTs. Reduction in microbial load of groundwater was considered ineffective, but 5-min H2O2 preoxidation at 15 mg L−1 led to >4.0 log10 inactivation of Phi X174 coliphage and >3.0 of Escherichia coli in surface water. We believe this performance was increased due to the presence of catalysts in the river water. This raised the point that water quality may be not only impairing, but potentially beneficial to the main HWT and characterization is crucial prior to the implementation of any technologies.

Flexible and deterministic household water saving under water demand uncertainty: existing water distribution system and sanitary sewer perspectives

An integrated method that evaluates conflicting hydraulic performances of water distribution systems (WDSs) and sanitary sewers (SSs) considering water-saving schemes (WSSs) under fixed (deterministic) or uncertain water demands was formulated. WSSs considered include household water-saving fixtures and appliances whose water flows impact water distribution system (WDS) and sanitary sewer (SS) hydraulic performances in different ways. In the proposed flexible approach, a multi-objective optimisation problem was formulated and solved considering trade-offs of three objectives: (1) maximisation of the average cost savings (2) maximisation of the average WDS resilience index and (3) minimisation of the average SS self-cleansing velocity deficit factor. The decision variables include water-saving fixture and appliance capacities that are applied in a deterministic or flexible manner at a household level. The constraints include WDS and SS hydraulic requirements together with decision bounds of the available water-saving scheme capacities. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm was used to obtain trade-off solutions. This method was demonstrated in the corresponding WDS and SS network subsystems of Tsholofelo extension in Gaborone, Botswana. The results indicate that WSSs lead to visibly conflicting WDS and SS hydraulic performances. Moreover, considering uncertainty inherent in water demand and the corresponding planning and management of WDSs and SSs provides more sustainable solutions as demand uncertainties unveil.