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Project lead: Jane Tanner (IWR)/ David Gwapedza (University of Namibia)
Collaborators: Laura Bannatyne (RU Geography Dept), Andrew Slaughter (IWR), Njabulo Dlamini (IWR), Joshua Rasifudi (DWS), Mthulisi Ngwenya (RU Geography Dept)

October 2024 – March 2027

In recent years, South African municipalities have increasingly struggled to meet water quality standards for both drinking water and wastewater discharge. Climate change is a key factor, disrupting catchment hydrology and sedimentation, which impacts water quality. Other contributing factors include population growth, urbanisation, rising demands for food and energy, and poor management of solid and liquid waste from households, industry, and mining. Although river water quality monitoring has improved in the South African context, significant challenges still remain. The Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS, 2023) has emphasized the urgent need for innovative technologies and collaborative approaches involving the private sector, civil society, and researchers to improve water management.

This project aims to advance knowledge to support the implementation of a waste discharge charge system in South Africa. While the Water Quality System Assessment Model (WQSAM) developed at the IWR shows promise, it currently lacks a sediment module to simulate nutrient and metal dynamics. The proposed integration of two models developed at the IWR - the Water Quality and Sediment model (WQSED) and WQSAM—both part of the SPATSIM framework—will address this gap. Although WQSED has been tested in Southern Africa and the USA, it remains largely untested in South Africa due to limited sediment data. Broadly, this project responds to the DWS Integrated water quality management policy by aiming to update and improve WQSAM by incorporating sediment and metal simulation, during which model validation will be achieved using the long-term sediment observation dataset.

The project has three specific and interlinked broad objectives:

1. To establish a South African water quality modelling platform by coupling the WQSED model to the WQSAM model and avail it for water quality assessments.
2. To robustly test and validate the modelling platform under varying land use and/or climatic conditions, then re-factor the model to improve functionality and ease of use.
3. To run training workshops on applying the modelling platform, then establish a community of practice for its application and development to ensure sustainability

The project commenced in October 2024. Short summaries of two recent deliverables submitted to the WRC are listed below:

Deliverable 1 (Capacity building): This deliverable is linked to Aim 3 and included addressing the critical deficit in water quality modelling expertise within South Africa. To bridge this gap, a comprehensive training workshop tailored for governmental agencies and students was conducted. This workshop served as a pivotal platform for imparting knowledge and proficiency in utilising WQSAM. The strategic focus of WQSAM training was to ensure that participants understood this advanced tool for water quality assessment and management.

Training on model WQSAM in November 2024 at Rhodes University for Department of Water and Sanitation, and RU students.

Deliverable 2 (Literature review and description of the study area): This deliverable is linked to Aim 1 and included a review of literature of existing water quality management strategies and water quality modelling in South Africa as well as the case study descriptions. In order to model and predict the WQSAM data inputs, gaps (sediment transport, metal simulation) and the WQSED model were explained. Overall, the Vaal River Catchment and the GrootDraai Dam Catchment were selected as the case study sites.

The project includes one MSc student Ms Njabulo Dlamini who is working on the validation of the sediment model, and one Post-Doctoral Fellow Dr Mthulisi Ngwenya who is based in the Geography Department. This project represents a concrete collaboration between the IWR and the Geography Department through Dr Ngwenya’s involvement, and through the involvement of Geography PhD student Ms Laura Bannatyne who has produced a comprehensive sediment dataset for the project to use in validating the sediment model. The project also involves Dr Joshua Rasifudi from the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), which will ensure that the products developed remain practical and usable for DWS. Finally, the WQSAM model has recently been selected by the Resource Protection Unit of DWS to revise the national waste water discharge standards (set in the 1980s) to bring them in line with the more recently determined Resource Quality Objectives. The project is therefore timeous and we have committed to working closely with the Resource Protection Unit to support them wherever we can in the application of the model. The project promises to be exciting, multi-disciplinary and highly applied, and will make a significant contributions to water resource protection in South Africa.

Last Modified: Fri, 11 Apr 2025 14:14:34 SAST