Question NW3631 to the Minister of Water and Sanitation

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04 December 2017 - NW3631

Profile picture: Khawula, Ms MS

Khawula, Ms MS to ask the Minister of Water and Sanitation

Whether (a) her department and/or (b) any entity reporting to her own land; if so, in each case, (i) where is each plot of land located, (ii) what is the size of each specified plot and (iii) what is each plot currently being used for?

Reply:

a) The Minister hereby submits the land register which carries the DWS immovable water infrastructure. The land assets are grouped per type of use and are based on representative land areas that the DWS requires to host, access and maintain these assets. The fair values were calculated using representative land costs for urban and rural settlement areas, open rural land and tribal land.

The DWS is currently busy reconciling this register with the available title deeds, which is a time-consuming process, considering that not all title deeds and Surveyor-General (SG) diagrams are electronically available and that many of the tribal land areas still need to be formalized. The land asset register has been developed on the basis of control other than ownership.

The type of land ownership comprises: (Land Asset register attached)

  • State owned land where the DWS or DPW own the land due to permanent use such as:
  • Dam basins to store water and to cater for increased dam levels during flood events.
  • Administrative buildings such as offices, residential housing, workshops and stores.
  • Special facilities such as pump stations, water treatment works, reservoirs and wastewater works.

Servitudes on private and tribal land to carry the following types of infrastructure and to provide access to this infrastructure for operation and maintenance purposes:

  • Canals
  • Pipelines
  • Tunnels
  • Access roads to dams and other buildings

Servitudes for “backwater” events, when water levels in rivers exceed the normal flood lines due to the backwater effect of dams. These are only applicable upstream of dams.

b) The land area was calculated using the definition of control, meaning the minimum area that is required to accommodate the above water storage at dams, access to bulk distribution infrastructure and flood events. This considered representative servitude widths, where these are not available from title deeds, and representative unit costs of land.

 (i) Location is available on a GIS; attached tables summarize the location per DWS scheme, area office and operating cluster.

(ii) Size of each item on the land register is shown in square meters in each table.

 (iii) Use of the land is listed under the column “Facility Type Description”.

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