About Jeffares & Green - The Witness , 2004/11/30
In South Africa, a quarter of our population do not have access to potable water. At Jeffares and Green we are proud to have been part of the AquAmanzi Consortium that implemented the KwaZulu-Natal BoTT contract to supply water to rural communities, and through which nearly a million people gained access to clean water.
Over the years we have been responsible for the successful design, supervision and management of a range of water-related projects, from rudimentary rural water schemes to water purification works and major water resources management projects. Our geosciences section has evolved, through client needs, into a multi-disciplinary team of geologists, hydrogeologists, geophysicists, environmental scientists, engineers, project manager and GIS specialists.
Two examples of our work are:
1. Rudimentary Water Supply Programmes focusing on rural borehole development programmes to meet the free basic water obligations of municipalities in rural areas and
2. the Schools Play-pump Programme in which children play on a merry-go-round which drives a pump fitted to a borehole and extracts water for communal use, for which Jeffares and Green received the South African Association for Civil Engineers (SAACE) commendation for excellence in civil engineering for projects valued at less than R5-million. The award acknowledged J&G's involvement in the Schools Play-pump Programme which aims to develop long-term, sustainable, groundwater sources near primary schools in specific communities where conditions are appropriate.
The programme was initiated by the Department of Water Affairs & Forestry (DWAF) at the time of the World Summit in 2002, and brings together engineering technology, rural communities in need of water, and corporate marketers. At the heart of the programme is an adapted merry-go-round, manufactured by Roundabout Outdoor, which converts the energy of children playing on a roundabout into the power required to pump water from a borehole to an elevated tank.
The water is then on-tap for communal use and relieves women and children from the strenuous task of using hand-pumps. A play-pump can produce about 1 400 l/h at 16 rpm from a depth of 40 m, a delivery rate with which a typical hand-pump cannot compete. Work was undertaken on 102 boreholes, including the refurbishment of 63 boreholes and the establishment of 39 new ones. The total cost of implementing the programme was R2,8-million and it benefited more than 51 000 people in KwaZulu-Natal.
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