Borehole Events

Borehole Sustainable Yield Test for Water Supply Training: from THEORY TO PRACTICAL: The closing date for registration has been extended to 24 January 2020 SADC- GMI is offering a Borehole Sustainable Yield Test for Water Supply Training

Groundwater is not private property, and the use of groundwater requires a water use license or a general authorization. This is imperative for most environmental impact assessments, requiring even ongoing monitoring for the foreseeable future.

Public domain borehole information in South Africa is generally stored in the National Groundwater Archive (NGA) and the Groundwater Resources Information Project (GRIP) databases of which both are centralized databases. The GRIP database is updated by the Department of Water and Sanitation, but only covers one of the nine provinces. The NGA on the other hand covers the entire country, however, there is a backlog of borehole information that needs to be captured, and it has limited time-series data.

Being in South Africa we have all be exposed to the pressures associated with drought. In drought situations, we see how it becomes mayhem with numerous short-cuts being taking, incorrect methodologies being implemented and over-inflated prices and opinions being applied and pronounced in the drought regions. As water supply engineers, hydrogeologists and scientists, we all need to learn from one another and adhere to some form of standards in the areas of borehole drilling, pumping tests, and monitoring.