Wastewater treatment remains an ongoing challenge in the Maloti-A-Phofung  (MAP) Municipality where the University of the Free State Qwaqwa Campus is based. In response to the crisis, a partnership between the UFS and Israel will contribute to the climate change discourse and bring relief to the water crisis in MAP.

Dr Patricks Otomo, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Zoology and Entomology on the Qwaqwa Campus, recently consolidated a budding collaboration with Dr Clive Lipchin, who is the Director of the Centre for Transboundary Water Management at the Arava Institute in  Palestine, Israel, to introduce transboundary water treatment and management to MAP.

In June 2022, Dr Otomo and other UFS colleagues, along with the MAP Supervisor of Water and Wastewater Treatment Plants, visited Israel to learn more about the technologies they have introduced towards eradicating their water crisis. As a semi-arid country, Israel is exposed to pressures of high water demand and little rainfall.

In response to the crisis, implemented an aggressive program to decrease household and agricultural usage, recycle and reuse wastewater and increase supply with seawater desalination. Through the collaboration, Dr Otomo and Dr Lipchin will be looking to provide long-term solutions to the ongoing water problem in MAP, Dr Otomo said.

Water treatment plants in Qwaqwa have been closed for a number of years, but sewage water still comes through and is directed into water that surrounding communities consume.

“We have identified some key problem sites and decided to introduce some solutions. We’re busy trying to get funding to address these issues in the Maloti-A-Phofung area. The municipality indicated that they need the help we are trying to bring, and we have already identified some international collaborators we would like to partner with for this project.”