Boil Notices and Power Cuts: How Does It Affect You?

South Africa’s recently published Blue Drop 2022 report shows an alarming decline in the Republic’s water quality, with 23% of municipalities flagged as being at critical risk. Municipalities have been issuing boil notices to warn consumers of the decline in water quality. Access to sufficient, safe water is a basic right enshrined by the South African Constitution. The scarce freshwater resources are decreasing in quality due of an increase in pollution and the insufficient treatment of effluent, caused by urbanization, industry, mining, agriculture, energy use and accidental water pollution.

A boil notice is issued by government authorities or water utilities and is a precaution against consumers drinking potentially contaminated water. These notices are usually due to unexpected conditions that have created a potential for bacteriological contamination in the public water system.

Boil Notices: A sovereign remedy?

Usually, a boil notice will be in place for up to 48 hours, but sometimes longer. The time span for the notice will depend on the exact problems and how quickly the situation can be corrected or the time required for water quality tests to be conducted and show that the water supply is safe for consumption.

To comply with the boil notice, consumers will need to ensure that all drinking water is heated until it reaches a full rolling boil for a minimum of one minute before it can be consumed. Since the country has an energy crisis and is dealing with continued load shedding, this can be a time-consuming and tedious process, which will need a lot of ahead planning to have sufficient water and energy available for cooking, drinking, washing and general hygiene practices.

However, boiling water only kills living organisms and bacteria. Some consumers are under the wrong impression that boiling automatically makes water safe, which is NOT true. In fact in sometimes, boiling water can make things far worse. Let’s take for example the Nitrate contamination. Some think that nitrates can be removed by boiling water, when in actual fact it only raises or doubles the nitrate levels due to the chemical reaction.

South Africa needs to avail more clean water to its citizens to avoid diseases and to improve the life of those, who do not have the luxury to purchase bottled water or have uninterrupted access to electricity. We ensure that the water coming out of our solutions is of the best possible quality.

Let’s start a conversation today about the best water treatment solutions available from our renowned family of advanced and modular water solutions.