Business Case forthe Pongola-Umzimkulu Catchment Management ...

Business Case for the Pongola-Umzimkulu Catchment Management Agency
• Conducting and commissioning water resources studies and investigations on
water resources, advising DWA and interested parties on the matter and
providing support to integrated water resources planning through:
o Developing a catchment management strategy (CMS) in accordance with
the national water resources strategy. This function includes:
Conducting, commissioning and participating in investigations and
studies to gather information to support management decisions
for strategy development
Developing management strategies, including WRM/
reconciliation, allocation and water quality management plans
Investigating and providing advice to DWA on WMA planning to
inform the NWRS and other national processes
Advising users/institutions on implications of CMS/ NWRS for
water resource development
o Investigating and providing advice on disaster management to DWA and
other institutions on the management of floods, droughts and pollution
incidents, putting in place early warning systems and supporting
municipalities in preventing development within floodplains;
• Information Management:Data and information acquisition, management and
sharing/dissemination is a key to fulfilling the role of the Pongola-UmzimkuluCMA. The
information management functional area will focus on providing comprehensive and
consistent information at all levels, set-up effective information systems, including
establishing strategic interfaces with DWA information systems where necessary to
improve access to information by stakeholders. The key aspects of this function are set
out below:
• Monitoring systems: the CMA must put in place the necessary monitoring of
water use and resource status that they need to perform their functions, over
and above the national monitoring conducted by DWA;
• Data and information systems:the CMA must put in place the necessary
databases and information systems to capture the relevant data to be
provided by DWA from the national information system and from their own
monitoring systems. These must cover water use (registration and
authorisation), and resource status (water quality and quantity). These
systems must interface effectively with the DWA systems and with other
related CMA systems. DWA will need to put in place appropriate protocols to
ensure that this is possible.
• Information assessment: The CMA must be in a position to analyse the
information to provide trends and evaluation assessment to the planning and
management sections so that they are able to respond appropriately to
ensuring effective use and management of water resources.
The information manager must be an integrator, facilitating the integration of water
resource information to corporate and strategic information systems, in particular keeping
up to date information on registrations and water use to support revenue collection and
strategic planning process at WMA and National level.
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