US $1bn has been raised in capital markets by South Africa’s Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority (TCTA) for the Lesotho Highlands water project.
Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu confirmed the report and said that the authority needed guarantees from the National Treasury before it could raise the private funding for the project.
“The department now has the resources and the guarantees and it is ready to provide water security in the country. We can now continue with the project,” said Sisulu.
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LHWP
Created in 1984, the LHWP was designed to have five phases over 30 years and transfer up to 2 billion cubic meters of water annually from Lesotho to South Africa’s commercial hubs and industries like Sasol and Eskom. Phase one started delivering water in 1996.
The raised funds will facilitate the completion of phase 2 of the Lesotho Highlands water project, which involves the construction of several dams including the Polihali Dam to be built downstream of the confluence of the Khubelu and Senqu Rivers in the Mokhotlong district in the Eastern highlands of Lesotho. It will allow the formation of a reservoir on the Orange and Khubelu Rivers over an area of 5,053 hectares, with a total storage capacity of 2,325 million m³.
A 38km long water transfer tunnel which will link the Polihali reservoir to the Katse reservoir will also be built. The dam will be supported by a saddle dam, which is an auxiliary reservoir built to confine the reservoir created by a primary dam, either to allow for higher water elevation and storage or to limit the extent of the reservoir in order to increase its yield.
The water project is expected to put in place the physical and managerial capacity for Lesotho to harness the surplus water of the Senqu/Orange River and its tributaries in order to effect the delivery of specified quantities of water to the designated outlet into the Republic of South Africa and by utilizing such delivery system to generate hydropower in the Kingdom of Lesotho.
