Water Wheel March/April 2024: Water Quality And Ecosystems

Abstract

New water quality guidelines published for aquatic ecosystems In the 1990s the then Department of Water Affairs and Forestry led a project to develop procedures and to derive a set of water quality criteria for safeguarding freshwater ecosystems in South Africa. The resultant first edition of the Water Quality Guidelines for Aquatic Ecosystems, published in 1996, was part of an ongoing effort to improve the decision support tools required for the management of the country’s water resources. The 1996 water quality guidelines are widely used in South Africa, however, they have been criticised for four fundamental reasons. Firstly, they have been criticised for not being explicitly risk-based and not taking an explicit risk approach in their development and implementation. An important implementation outcome of not being risk-based is what has been referred to as over-or under-protection. In this regard, the current guidelines are being used as trigger value, above which an action, usually a corrective one, needs to be taken, and below which all is assumed to be fine.

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