WESS Ecosystem Integration

Section 1

WESS category

WESS is a defined category in national regulation. The revised Compulsory National Water and Sanitation Services Norms and Standards, issued under Section 9(1) of the Water Services Act (Act 108 of 1997) and gazetted by DWS in June 2025, defines it directly:

"Water efficient sanitation solutions (WESS) means sanitation systems which require low to no water, completely off-grid, non-sewered, on-site or are decentralised and utilise technologies that include using water saving devices, water-efficient processes and beneficial use of waste products." DWS, Revised Compulsory Norms and Standards, June 2025

A WESS unit is an end-to-end system. It collects and treats waste on site to defined design parameters, recycles water for flushing or other fit-for-purpose reuse, and recovers nutrients, water and energy from by-products. The user retains a full flushing experience, served by on-site treatment rather than a sewer connection.

Exclusions: VIP pit latrines fall outside the category because they lack integrated safe sludge treatment. The provision or distribution of bucket toilets to communities, in formal and informal settlements alike, is prohibited.

Section 2

National sanitation position

South Africa is not on track to meet its SDG 6 sanitation targets. The 2023–2025 planning instruments (DWS NSIP) record a backlog that continues to deteriorate under water scarcity, climate change, rapid urbanisation and population growth:

Inappropriate sanitation (chemical toilets, unventilated pits, buckets)No sanitation

The NSIP provincial scorecards show emptying-and-transport, treatment, disposal-and-reuse and institutional indicators sitting largely in the red across almost every province. Extending conventional waterborne sewerage into that picture is often neither affordable nor physically feasible, and this is the gap the 2025 standards assign to WESS. National policy is moving away from water-intensive flush-and-forget systems, and from a treatment-and-disposal mindset, towards a circular sanitation economy in which excreta is treated as a resource for nutrients and energy.

#	South Africa	EC	FS	GP	KZN	LP	MP	NW	NC	WC
	Overall sanitation status
	Containment
1	No sanitation backlog (DWS WSKS, Apr 2023)
2	Inappropriate sanitation backlog (DWS WSKS, Apr 2023)
3	Rate of sanitation delivery (backlog eradication)
	Emptying and Transport
4	Pit toilet emptying
5	Vacuum truck / honeysucker needs
6	Vacuum truck / honeysucker condition
	Treatment
7	WWTW design capacity utilised
8	WWTW effluent quality
9	WWTW staffing shortfall
	Disposal and Reuse
10	Wastewater sludge analysis, classification and management
11	Faecal sludge analysis, classification and management
12	Treated wastewater effluent reuse
	Institutional Aspects
13	Green Drop performance
14	Sanitation staff vacancies
15	Sanitation business financial status

GoodAveragePoor

Section 3

Regulatory requirements

Two instruments change the operating environment for every WSA: the June 2025 revised Compulsory Norms and Standards, and the licensing regime of the Water Services Amendment Bill, which separates the authority from the operator and enables WSAs to appoint capable, licensed providers, including the private sector.

Settlement types where the standards recommend WESS

• In areas of dense formal and medium settlement where there is resource scarcity, and/or inadequate capacity or dysfunctionality in the wastewater treatment works or sewer system;
• In low-density or sparsely populated settlements, as the default water-efficient option.

Three regulatory shifts

Combined effect: technology choice is now driven by the technical realities of population density, water scarcity and system capacity rather than by historical precedent. A WSA with treatment works over capacity may not approve further bulk connections, and a WSA presented with a compliant WESS development may not unreasonably decline it.

Section 4

Applicability conditions

WESS complements sewered sanitation across a service area rather than replacing it; hybrid approaches, with WESS and conventional systems each deployed where suitable, worked best in the pilots. WESS applies where one or more of the following conditions hold:

• Limited access to water resources. Water scarcity is a real constraint and conventional waterborne systems are not feasible.
• No centralised sewerage infrastructure. Sewers are impractical to extend; off-grid sanitation is required.
• Environmental sensitivity. Sites near sensitive water sources, or eco-tourism locations.
• Infrastructure constraints. Rocky or flood-prone terrain; remote, hard-to-reach areas.
• A sustainability mandate. The municipality or development prioritises resource recovery and self-sufficiency.

Market segments already demonstrated in South Africa span schools, households, informal settlements, formal housing and multi-storey developments. The demonstrations run through the SASTEP programme, with twelve school sites across six technologies plus informal-settlement and rural sites, and through municipal pilots in Cape Town, eThekwini, Johannesburg, Mogale City and Limpopo.

Section 5

Decision pathway: s78 and MFMA s120

A WSA holds executive authority: it must ensure access to efficient, affordable and sustainable services, plan through the IDP and WSDP, regulate locally, and decide the institutional arrangement for provision under Section 78 of the Municipal Systems Act. A Water Services Provider, internal or external, then operates the service, engages consumers and collects tariffs on behalf of the WSA.

s78 assessment in three phases

The s78(2) Council decision at Step 11 either confirms internal implementation or opens the external-mechanism phase. Reproduced from the SALGA workshop presentation.

Internal assessment criteria: s78(1)

Each of the five criteria requires evidence rather than assertion. Costs and benefits must rest on ring-fenced financial data for the current service function; an assessment that estimates from general municipal accounts does not satisfy s78(1)(a). Capacity must be projected as well as described: the Act requires an HR plan, a costed training programme and a credible timeline. The potential for re-organisation requires structured analysis and cannot be treated as automatically satisfied. Developmental objectives require documented alignment with the current IDP and WSDP. The views of organised labour must be traceable to a formal consultation process; a notification letter to a trade union does not satisfy the requirement.

External mechanisms: s78(3)

Six mechanism types must be considered: a municipal entity, another municipality, an organ of state (such as a water board), a community-based organisation, an NGO/non-profit, or a competitively tendered private-sector contract. A feasibility study that evaluates only one mechanism type cannot satisfy s78(3)(c). The study itself covers eight domains: service identification, contract term, outputs, value for money (benchmarked against the internal baseline), affordability, needs of the poor, risk transfer, and impact on staff, assets and the IDP.

PPP obligations: MFMA s120 and Treasury approvals

SALGA guidance: s78 and MFMA s120 are best run as one integrated process from the outset. Municipalities that run them sequentially add months and risk producing two inconsistent feasibility documents. A feasibility study not designed to meet TVR I requirements is returned by National Treasury for rework. Stages cannot be combined or fast-tracked, and a contract executed without completing all four stages is unenforceable.

Section 6

Financing through the Water Partnerships Office

Municipalities often lack the funds and expertise to prepare bankable projects, while banks, pension funds and corporate social investment capital stand ready to invest. The Water Partnerships Office (WPO) closes this gap. It is a ring-fenced national entity housed in the DBSA and owned by DWS, with SALGA connecting the programme to municipalities; the steering committee is chaired by the Director-General: DWS.

Within the WPO, the NSS Programme develops and scales off-grid sanitation (non-sewered sanitation, WESS and reinvented toilet technologies) through demand mapping, policy and advocacy, and the packaging of bankable projects.

From constrained budgets to bankable projects

Credit enhancements from development-finance partners de-risk projects so commercial lenders can participate: first-loss and subordinated facilities, tenor extension to match infrastructure life, and guarantee products. The same toolkit secured R4.23 billion (≈USD 235 m) in grant and concessional funding from the Green Climate Fund for the Water Reuse Programme, the blueprint now applied to NSS and WESS, and has mobilised over R50 million for the sanitation programme.

The working arrangement is that a municipality brings its WESS projects to the WPO, the WPO packages them into a bankable programme, and blended finance mobilises the capital.

Section 7

De-risking the installed unit

Certification establishes that a design can perform under standard test conditions. It carries no statement about a particular installation, its loading, its operator, or its current month of operation, and a unit that meets design criteria on commissioning day drifts as loading, temperature, power supply and maintenance vary. A lender, a municipality and a household each need a statement about one particular installation at one particular time.

The WESS Engineering De-Risking Protocol (WASH R&D Centre, UKZN) supplies that statement: the conversion of a site from a state of uncertainty to a state of documented, monitored and managed risk, maintained as a live, financeable signal. The protocol runs alongside certification rather than replacing it.

Site engagement

Three visits over twelve to sixteen weeks (baseline, mid-point and final) apply eight field diagnostics on one decision tree, covering settling, hydraulics, sludge, biological activity, water quality, disinfection, product yield and microbial profiling. Every measurement resolves to a traffic light with a defined corrective move:

Seven completion criteria (effluent quality, process integrity, infrastructure, operator capability, sensor coverage, social acceptance and product-water yield) roll the compartment results up to the whole unit, alongside a living HAZOP register scored on a 5×5 severity–likelihood matrix. A low-cost sensor package (SenseArray) streams pH, dissolved oxygen, temperature, turbidity, conductivity, TDS and ORP to the InfraTrack data platform, where soft-sensor models estimate the expensive compliance parameters between laboratory rounds. The platform carries a national register of 594 decentralised treatment sites.

Live rating

Engagement cost and financing benefit

A full three-visit engagement costs R175 000 per site, covering engineering personnel, laboratory analysis, the sensor package with first-year telemetry, travel, consumables and reporting. Under the WESP De-Risking Fund the cost is met 50/50, so the provider carries about R87 500. On an illustrative R3 million loan over five years, a rating that moves pricing from prime (11.5%) to prime − 3 percentage points saves about R265 694 in interest, a net benefit of about R178 000 after the provider's share. Break-even sits at about one percentage point of spread.

For a municipality the same record shows that the service it is accountable for is being delivered, and gives warning of drift before failure rather than when residents report discoloured water at the toilet.

Section 8

Municipal implementation experience

City of Cape Town pilot implementation

The City of Cape Town ran WESS pilots across schools, industrial complexes, formal housing and informal settlements, with a dedicated PMU, an M&E framework with independent evaluation and go/no-go gates, and a tranche-based, incremental approach to scale-up. The lessons reported by the City:

• Community engagement is both necessary and beneficial. A dedicated community-facilitation resource produced upfront acceptance, asset ownership, help with user training and behaviour change, although vandalism, poor communication between leaders and incorrect toilet use still occurred in places.
• Regulatory requirements surface during the project. Several were unclear at the start, and new requirements forced continuous rescheduling with unplanned cost implications. Supportive by-laws and standards are best developed early.
• Construction discipline matters regardless of project size. The technology is relatively simple to install, but the supporting civil infrastructure, with appropriate engineering oversight, proved the critical success factor.
• Political will unblocks decisions. Committed political leadership and management support kept the project moving.
• Hybrid approaches worked best. WESS and conventional systems were each deployed where suitable, and strong partnerships between the city, the WRC, communities and the private sector accelerated learning.

eThekwini reinvented-toilet pilot

Three demonstration sites in informal settlements, live since 2024, treat and reuse wastewater for flushing with no sewer link and no load on strained treatment works. This is the delivery model the NSS Programme scales nationally.

PRANA cost case: Portion 80 Nooitgedacht, Mogale City

A life-cost assessment for a 5 000-user settlement (25 000 flushes per day) compared a WESS solution against VIPs and conventional centralized and decentralized waterborne systems:

WESS costs more in year one and breaks even within the first five years, saving an estimated R49 m against centralized and R69 m against decentralized waterborne solutions over the project lifespan. The saving derives from very low annual maintenance cost and reduced water consumption.

Section 9

First steps

Drawn from across the workshop, a practical opening sequence for a WSA:

• Map the service area against the applicability conditions. Identify settlements with water scarcity, no sewer access, constrained WWTW capacity, difficult terrain or environmental sensitivity as WESS candidates (Section 4).
• Establish the WWTW capacity position. Where works lack capacity, new bulk connections may no longer be approved, and WESS becomes the compliant route (Section 3).
• Plan s78 and Treasury approval as one process. Design the feasibility work to satisfy TVR I from the outset, and evaluate all viable mechanism types (Section 5).
• Bring the project to the WPO early. Project preparation, blended-finance structuring and credit enhancement are the capacity most WSAs lack in-house (Section 6).
• Budget de-risking into the deployment. Independent installation-level assessment and live monitoring protect the service, the community and the financing (Section 7).
• Invest in community engagement from the start. Co-design, a dedicated facilitation resource and behaviour-change support recur across the pilot lessons (Section 8).

Contacts and resources

Training materials for every module (presentations, factsheets and supplementary reading) are freely downloadable from the WESS training library: trainingonwess.creation.camp/library. SASTEP demonstration programme: sastep.org.