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Report No 678-F-001
METSI CONSULTANTS: SUMMARY OF MAIN FINDINGS FOR PHASE 1 DEVELOPMENT
14.1. RELATIONSHIP OF THE IFR TO LHWP DEVELOPMENT
SECTION 14. THE NEXT STEPS
The purpose of this section is to present salient information, observations and some aspects that have to be
considered pertinently if a credible and broadly acceptable decision on IFRs is to be reached.
This study has been charged with establishing appropriate IFRs for river courses downstream of LHWP
structures and for planning and initiating the monitoring programme. The contract is also required to provide
recommendations for mitigation against, and compensation for, significant impacts linked with the various projects
and to advise on the costs or benefits of meeting, or not meeting, the IFR in the context of current Treaty
requirements.
The study has provided the following information:
detailed descriptions of four possible scenarios for flow release regimes, including information on
physical, ecological and economic consequences;
costs of mitigation and estimates of resource losses associated with each of the four scenarios;
estimates of system water yields for Phases 1 of the LHWP for each of the four scenarios.
In order for the IFR information from this study to be used in this process, the following revenue-related
information needs to be developed by the parties in Lesotho and RSA for comparison to the environmental and
economic impacts of the four scenarios:
the values of the royalties to Lesotho associated with the yields of each of the four scenarios;
the values of hydro-generated power to Lesotho associated with each of the four scenarios;
the costs to the RSA of reductions in yields from that available under the Treaty Scenario.
The POE 4 have proposed a basic three-step process in moving to a consensus and decision on the IFR's to be
implemented for the LHWP namely:
Step 1: Identifying the range of an acceptable IFR
The aim of this step is to identify a rough estimate of the bulk water allocation to be made available for IFR. This
will be based on the information provided by this study and determination of other costs to RSA and Lesotho
specified above. These costs would be computed using models currently available to the two parties or may be
assisted by outside sources. At this stage decisions are to be made by parties involved on a broad basis
considering tradeoffs between economics and environmental impacts.
4 POE. Mission report. October 1999.
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