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WATER USE LICENCE REGULATIONS: DRAFT AMENDMENTS EXPLAINED
- 05 June 2023
- Water & Sanitation
- SA Legal Academy
Please note: on 15 June 2023, the Department of Water & Sanitation issued a second media statement intended to address concerns about transformation requirements in the amendments being proposed. According to the statement, they will not apply to existing water use licenses or their renewal. Neither will the amendments affect water use applications arising out of the compulsory re-licensing of allocations made before the National Water Act, 1999, came into force.
The Department of Water & Sanitation has issued a media statement explaining the rationale behind proposed amendments to the regulations on water use licence application procedural requirements.
Gazetted on 19 May 2023 for input within 60 days, the amendments:
- seek to ‘effect reforms in relation to equitable allocation of water use
- respond to a review of ‘timeframes and fees linked to licence application processes’, and
- seek to address regulatory uncertainties in key aspects of water use licensing, including:
- public participation, and
- ‘the provision of financial security for post-licence rehabilitation’.
To that end, they introduce proposed thresholds for extracting water from a natural resource that would be determined ‘against the level of black ownership in applications submitted for new water use allocations’. According to the media statement, this is expected to go some way towards ensuring ‘transformation’ in the allocation of water use licences, thus addressing apartheid-related ‘disparities in access’ apparently continuing to this day.
The draft amendments are underpinned by section 3 of the National Water Act, 1998, which requires the department to ‘ensure that water is protected, used, developed, conserved, managed and controlled in a sustainable and equitable manner, for the benefit of all persons and in accordance with its constitutional mandate’.
The minimum information requirements envisaged for ‘unconventional gas licence applications’ are proposed in anticipation of applications being made in relation to exploring ‘other sources of energy’.
- media statement
- draft amendments
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch