New study steers integrated management of Gouritz water

Abstract

The environment and water The Gouritz Water Management Area (WMA), covering an area of approximately 53 000 km2, was one of 19 WMAs delineated in the 2004 edition of the National Water Resource Strategy, but consolidated into nine in 2012. The Gouritz WMA was merged with the Breede-Overberg WMA to form the Breede-Gouritz WMA, but by then the tender process for the Gouritz Reserve Determination Study had been completed, and project planning was underway. The tender was awarded to a consortium of specialists, with Aldu le Grange of AECOM (formerly BKS) heading up the project management component and Patsy Scherman of Scherman Colloty and Associates the technical component. The study was motivated largely by the need to determine the Reserve – the quantity and quality of water required to protect aquatic ecosystems and meet basic human needs – before various applications for water licences that had been made to the then Department of Water Affairs (since renamed the Department of Water and Sanitation) could be processed.

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