(Water again) The thing is ...

In the same week economists told us to expect a 50% increase in meat prices as a result of the drought, the SA Government News Agency brought the news of efforts being made to limit the drought's effect. Water tanks with some 80 000 litres of water were delivered to the Umjindi and Thembisile Hani Local Municipalities in Mpumalanga. Before leaving the drought-stricken area, the Department of Water Affairs & Sanitation (DWAS) told the people: "South Africa is a water scarce country and the current drought is making the water challenge severe". The situation "calls for all of us to change our water use behaviour and embrace water conservation in everything we do".

That someone in government knows that water is scarce (and thus precious) in this country is good news. And DWAS was joined by three other government departments days later. The ministers of Environmental Affairs; Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries; and Public Works informed the Sterkspruit community in the Eastern Cape of what accompanies water shortage -- desertification, loss of livelihoods and so on. Now we're cookin'! The thing is: will these ministers and government departments take the message to the Department of Energy (DoE) and others in government who still regard fracking as an option for future energy needs?

Environmental checks and balances, we are assured, will prevent problems and allow for fracking to happen safely. The country's track record of environmental "checks and balances" elsewhere, certainly with mining, sounds every alarm bell possible! (Take a look at the Mpumalanga crisis: why is nobody listening report, or the one done by the Bureau for Food & Agricultural Policy).

But leaving environmental incompetence aside ... Fracking by its very nature throws up unpleasant surprises. Scout the ecowatch.com website, or watch the gas in a river near a fracking site in Australia exploding.

We simply cannot afford to have vast amounts of groundwater polluted and lost.

Fracking is not only agriculture's problem.  The Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG) tells us that whole towns in the Karoo would be devastated: 94% of them depend on groundwater.  So, DWAS et al ... any hope that you will enlighten the others, those in government? Include the news of fracking projects cancelled/postponed elsewhere in the world over the past year. You will either speak to your colleagues, or, under a likely future scenario, you will be again addressing communities, this time apologizing for a human-caused shortage of water that could have been avoided.