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dam-l Jo'burg water costs/LS
This is from the Nov 20 Business Day in South AFrica.
>Council faces mounting 'lost' water costs
>Deborah Fine
>
>
>THE greater Johannesburg metropolitan council could fail to recover costs
>running into millions of rands if it does not curb unaccounted-for water
>losses that made up between 28% and 42% of the total water purchased from
>Rand Water.
>A report tabled at a general council meeting yesterday revealed the costs of
>kilolitres of water might not be recovered in the current financial year
>because of theft, leakage and incomplete metering and billing systems.
>Unaccounted for water is described as volume of water that was "lost"
>between the process of purchasing the water from the board and directing it
>to consumers, billed according to their consumption.
>While leakage, theft and accidental losses made up a significant part of the
>problem, the bulk of the lost water could be attributed to unmetered areas
>where residents used water without being billed or did not pay for all the
>water they consumed.
>This was often the case in informal settlements and previously disadvantaged
>areas where meters were non-existent, faulty or in a state of disrepair, and
>where proper billing systems were not in place.
>To combat the costly problem, the council has set up a special task team to
>investigate the possibility of entering into a partnership with the private
>sector to assist with the maintenance and repair of water infrastructure, as
>well as metering, billing and revenue collection.
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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