| Summary: | Groundwater forms an essential part of water supply in the Limpopo Province, South Africa.
However, at planning level this message seems to be skewed and misinterpreted. Although a vast
number of water supply schemes are developed using groundwater as a resource, these schemes are
reported to fail and the resources are not considered sustainable. Therefore mistrust in groundwater
has developed, planners effectively eliminate groundwater from integrated water resource planning
and groundwater continues to be seen only as an ad hoc or emergency supply. The Groundwater
Resource Information Project (GRIP) was introduced to compare available information with verified
field information and it presents the information to planners and engineers in a format that is sensible
and easy to incorporate, therefore presenting groundwater as an integrated sustainable and strategic
resource. The work implemented during this project describes a hydrocensus - an information
capturing and presentation protocol that can be introduced anywhere at any scale to give planners the
opportunity to consider already developed groundwater infrastructure and incorporate it into the
overarching planning. The methodology was developed to describe to the user how he/she should go
about when conducting a hydrocensus to serve both the needs of water services and water resource
managers
The development of groundwater in South Africa is discussed to provide a perspective on how
groundwater was dealt with in the past and is looked upon now. Issues concerning groundwater
resource mapping as attempted by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) and the
Water Research Commission (WRC) are discussed and commented on. Also discussed is the
availability and format of groundwater data when creating maps and how the data are captured in the
different databases. All the maps however are derived from ques tionable and unverified field data.
The legal perspective on groundwater in terms of the National Water Act (NWA), the Water Services
Act (WSA) and the Environmental Conservation Act (ECA) is also briefly discussed. The different
uses of water are mentioned where groundwater may have a significant contribution. Shortcomings in
the Act are also discussed.
The proposed methodology spells out the so-called Groundwater Resource Information Project (GRIP)
and with marketing in the 21st century becoming more important in science, the slogan â Get a GRIP
on groundwaterâ was adopted. The methodology highlights the importance of an integrated team with various responsibilities and deliverables, the importance of field and office procedures and the
involvement of the community. It describes various verification stages where a quality control officer
checks field data through ad hoc site visits and where historically disadvantage individuals previously
not involved with a project of this nature, can learn from more experience individuals.
Information gathered clearly illustrates that vast amounts of money are spent on groundwater
development and that the majority of villages in Limpopo already have boreholes in close proximity.
The raw data can be used for immediate planning, operation and management purposes. The core of
GRIP is, however, dissemination of information and much time was spent to develop an interface
where data is captured, validated and placed on a database accessible through the World Wide Web.
The data can be downloaded through various methods available on the web page and exported as an
Excel spreadsheet. The data can then be imported in a GIS tool and manipulated to develop a series of
planning maps, develop site -specific water supply business plans or help planning engineers with dayto-
day requests.
Prior to GRIP, it was difficult and time consuming for planners in Limpopo to get access to reports
compiled by specialists for municipalities or consulting engineers, but through the means de veloped in
GRIP, planning engineers are enabled to stand up in meetings and with hard evidence in hand support
future groundwater development and planning, making it truly part of integrated water resource
management (IWRM).
This study lasted from the beginning of 2002 up to the middle of 2004. Further implementation of
GRIP continues in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape and there is a strong possibility that is might be
implemented in Kwazulu/Natal and the Free State. The GRIP website, other technology and
legislation may change with further implementation of GRIP
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