January 2022

Completion Date

Summary Scope of Work

This critical Feasibility Study identified the most technically and financially viable options for treating raw water from this large, scenic, but heavily polluted dam serving the Pretoria area and parts of the Northwest Province of South Africa, as well as a variety of eco-tourism attractions.

The dam wall is an impressive 149.5 meters long and 59.4 meters high, spanning a gorge in the Magaliesberg mountain range. Since the early 1970s, the dam has been in a hypertrophic state due to mismanagement of upstream wastewater treatment within the catchment. This has led to significant phosphate and nitrate deposits, distorting the local food web.

The project began with an intensive information gathering exercise for the study area, including current and future development plans, operation and maintenance information of existing water treatment facilities within the catchment, and a thorough review of pollution point-sources impacting the catchment as a whole.

This was then followed by a detail Pre-feasibility investigation which reviewed the breadth of treatment options available to the bulk water service provider, Rand Water, to fully utilize this potential water source under a variety of operating conditions and regulatory constraints. In the Final Feasibility, we further refined process configurations and construction phasing to arrive at options that would stand the test of viability at or near the identified willingness-to-pay tariff structure.