DWIP - Durban Water Improvement Project

Abstract

The water quality at the beachfront of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, is currently insufficient to meet the Blue Flag standard, leading to health issues for the beach users. Since Durban can be recognised by its busy port and attractive beachfront, it is a major centre for tourism. This means that research on the source of this poor water quality and the distribution of the pollution along the beachfront is of major importance for Durban to remain an attractive destination. It is very important to emphasize that to tackle the water quality problem at source technical, social and management aspect need to be considered simultaneously. It is inevitable to have a positive outcome for this project without finding a properly working combination between a technical design, the organizational structure, waste management and social issues for example since implementing a first world solution in a third world country is unrealistic at the moment. The scope area of this project consists of some catchment areas with their outfalls (of the storm water drainage system through which rainfall flows) at the beachfront of Durban between the uMgeni River and the port of Durban. Hence, an investigation of these areas onshore and a data study on the rainfall and the principle of the first flush has been performed. The first flush plays a big role in this project, since it is expexted that the first flush contains 80% of the total pollution load that enters the storm water system and hence the beachfront. The critical zones, those areas that are in urgent need of water quality improvement, are indicated by a technical analysis. Besides that a social and management analysis was carried out to identify the organisational structure of the eThekwini Municipality and present all social issues that help deteriorate the water quality and which can be disturbing when generating the final solution. Eventually, one critical zone, Addington Beach, has been elaborated on. A diversion chamber has been designed on a conceptual level that diverts almost all pollutants to the sewage system instead of the beachfront. Hence, it is expected that the sewage system and the waste water treatment plant are both capable of handling the additional volume of water due the implementation of this chamber. To increase the feasibility of this project a phasing plan has been written containing a responsibility chart and a Gantt chart. This plan has been based on both a project and process management approach.