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5.3 Water quantity and quality requirements
Legislative context
Water quality and quantity are mainly controlled from the terrestrial side under the National
Water Act 36 of 1998, under DWEA (Table 9). Legislation being developed under the White
Paper on Integrated Pollution and Waste Management for SA (2000) will also have a bearing on
river systems. The risk of marine pollution is addressed by the Combating Pollution of the Sea
by Oil Act 6 of 1981, under DEAT. This discussion focuses on National Water Act and the
Integrated Coastal Management Act as being the most pertinent to the development of the
Uilkraals Estuary Management Plan.
The White Paper on National Water Policy for SA (1997) promotes efficiency, equity and
sustainability in the use of water resources through its slogan “some, for all, forever”. The
policy explicitly recognises the environment as a legitimate user of water and makes provision
to protect the environment from overexploitation of water resources. The National Water Act
36 of 1998 (NWA) provides the legal framework for this policy. The NWA makes provision for a
water “Reserve” which provides the quantity and quality of water flow required in aquatic
ecosystems required to meet basic human needs and to protect the natural functioning of a
water resource. The latter portion of the reserve is known as the environmental Reserve.
The classification process
The extent to which an estuary’s functioning is catered for is determined by the designated
“class” (= future state of health) of that estuary, with some estuaries being assigned a low class
to allow maximal water provision and others being assigned a high class in order to meet
conservation needs. The decision as to the designated class of the estuary is thus a critical one.
In future, this will take place using a classification process that has recently been devised by
DWAF and is being gazetted. This process will entail consideration of the trade-offs in value
generated by allocating water (or pollution rights) to off-stream users (e.g. irrigation
agriculture), flow-reducing activities (e.g. plantation forestry) and polluters (e.g. municipalities,
farmers) versus allocating water to the environment for the provision of ecosystem services
(e.g. fishing, tourism). The Catchment Management Agencies will in future probably play the
key role in this decision –making process, but until these agencies are operational, decisions
are being made with the aid of water situation assessments known as Internal Strategic
Perspectives (ISPs) that were developed as an interim aid.
The reserve determination process
In the absence of a gazetted classification process, the environmental Reserve is currently
determined on the basis of recommendations emanating from a reserve determination study
using the Resource Directed Measures methodology in conjunction with considerations of the
demand for water in the catchment (the classification process described above will effectively
standardise the way this is done). In the case of the Uilkraals River System, a Reserve
Determination Study has not been undertaken and there is no preliminary assessment of the
freshwater requirements for individual components of the estuary.
Uilkraals Estuary Situation Assessment
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