eThekwini Municipality has revived its plans to conduct a feasibility study to build a 100 megalitre a day desalination plant to boost its efforts to ensure water security through alternative sources of water.
The municipality last week appointed finance and technical experts that will conduct a feasibility study, leading to the formation of a public private partnership (PPP) to build a desalination plant.
The municipality said the private partner would assume all risk and responsibility for the project.
It said it was engaging with the SA Development Bank as well as the International Finance Corporation on transaction advisory services capacity as the project needed a feasibility study.
Desalination refers to the process of removing salt from seawater.
The report tabled before council last week revealed that the City was looking to take the next step in the project following a “test phase” that was conducted by New Energy Development Organisation (Nedo) and Hitachi to test the remix water desalination technology and assess where it could reliably produce potable water for a large-scale desalination scheme.
Nedo is Japan’s largest public research and development organisation under the ministry of Trade and Industry.
Hitachi LTD became infamous a few years ago due to its links to the ANC, and the mention of its name during the council meeting raised concerns among some councillors.
The report sought to give city manager Musa Mbhele the authority to proceed with the implementation of a desalination programme at the Central Wastewater Treatment works via a PPP.
It detailed the background to the project and said a strategy called KwaZulu-Natal Water Reconciliation was formulated by the Department of Water and Sanitation, eThekwini and Umngeni-UThukela water board and other stakeholders to address water security.
“The strategy identified and presented desalination and the recycling of water for potable and non-potable use as an important potential water resource for eThekwini,” it said, adding that the eThekwini Water and Sanitation (EWS) unit had a goal of producing 20% of its own water supply from alternative sources in the next 10 years.
“There are only a few feasible water surfaces and these are becoming increasingly more expensive. To address the water supply issue, EWS has been exploring alternative options, such as the seawater desalination,” it said.
EWS together with Nedo embarked on a desalination demonstration project to evaluate the Remix Water Technology which integrates seawater desalination with treated water to reduce energy consumption and cost, the report said.
In February 2017, the report said, council authorised a report for the demonstration project in collaboration with Nedo. Nedo and eThekwini signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate for the joint implementation of the demonstration project to be built at the Central Wastewater Treatment Works. Under this memorandum, Nedo appointed Hitachi as an implementing agent of the remix demonstration plant.
It said the project was approved by council and implemented by Hitachi LTD, successfully meeting its performance criteria. Following its success, Nedo and Hitachi donated the plant to the municipality at no cost.
“To expand this initiative, the municipality plans to develop a 100ML a day desalination plant using the PPP model, transferring operations risk to the private partner. A PPP feasibility study was required. The Development Bank of Southern Africa and the International Finance Corporation have submitted project preparation proposals to fund the PPP feasibility study,” the report said.
The Mercury