The Cost of Delivering Water
Chemicals
There are three expensive chemicals that are used for purifying water. These are:
- Lime
- Organic Coagulant
- Chlorine
Lime is used to raise the pH to the required level in the water, which is about 7.0-8.0. Organic coagulant is used to bridge and aggregate the suspended particles for effective sedimentation process. Chlorine disinfects the water from potential harmful micro organisms.
Lime cost N$ 0.025/m3
Coagulant cost N$ 0.18/m3
Chlorine cost N$ 0.069/m3
Total Chemical Cost = N$0.27/m3
This appears minimal and may be deceiving. In the Cuvelai and Kunene areas alone, NamWater purified 11 160 834.50 m3 water. This volume in the North Region alone costs a total of close to 52 million dollars i.e. N$ 51 554 287.03 in 2003/2004.
If one adds the total amount of money for all the water purified in Namibia , the amount run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
