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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
Research Project
Paying for Storm Water?
Professor Neil Armitage of the Department of Civil Engineering and director of the interdisciplinary Urban Water
Management Group, is accustomed to pooling the perspectives and resources of academics from various departments
to find integrated, sustainable solutions to water-management problems, particularly as they affect Southern African
communities. Professor Armitage is also the only African representative on the joint committee on urban drainage of the
International Association of Hydraulic Engineering and Research and the International Water Association.
In a recently completed project, Professor Armitage
and PhD student Lloyd Fisher-Jeffes examined the
possibility of charging for storm water in South
Africa. While this may seem incomprehensible and
possibly even nonsensical, it should perhaps be
viewed in the context of the social, economic and
environmental impacts of poor water quality on South
Africa’s urban aquatic systems, which are increasingly
being highlighted by the media. Improving the water
quality in these systems will require catchment-wide
strategies, including the monitoring and management
of point and non-point source pollution collected
in storm water. Significant costs may be incurred;
however, international experience suggests that these
are outweighed by the benefits.
Municipalities across South Africa charge their
citizens for potable water and sewerage. Storm-
water management, however, is generally funded
through municipal rates. Competition with other
pressing needs frequently results in the storm-water
departments being significantly under-funded – at
times only receiving a tenth of what is required
for water-quantity management. Internationally,
an increasing number of cities have introduced a
direct charge for storm-water management in order
to secure the funding required to manage storm
water and its associated water pollution, and to
serve as a disincentive to polluting practices on
the part of landowners. The study has found that,
in order to ensure adequate funding for storm-
water management in South Africa, municipalities
will need to consider charging for storm-water
management based either on an Equivalent
Residential Unit or a Residential Equivalent Factor,
combined with an appropriate discount scheme for
on-site storm-water management. This project was
supported by the Water Research Commission.