Benchmarking of non-revenue water: experiences from South Africa

摘要

The latest NKW study undertaken for WRC and DWA represents a major advance in the understanding and assessment of water losses from municipal water supply systems in South Africa. It is the most comprehensive assessment yet undertaken, and despite the many problems experienced with data collection from many of the smaller municipalities it was possible to gather information for more than 75% of the water supplied throughout South Africa. The overall NRW for South Africa is estimated to be 1580M.m~3/year which is approximately 33% of the total water supplied.This conservatively represents a loss of over R7 billion (almost $1 billion) based on an average bulk water tariff of approximately R5/m~3.