GrandWest hits the jackpot with R18m water treatment plant

The new water treatment plant at GrandWest Casino and Entertainment World may have cost R18-million but it allows the Cape Town casino complex to go completely off the municipal water grid.

The plant produces 10-million litres of drinkable water every month by filtering water from four boreholes. Sun International’s GrandWest engineer‚ Johan Gelderblom‚ said they would recoup their investment within 30 months.

“The new system allows us to produce water at the rate of R9.20 per kilolitre. Currently‚ on the city’s municipal pricing‚ it would cost us R50 per kilolitre. So we end up spending a fifth of what we would have before we set up this treatment plant‚” said Gelderblom.

The system took 12 months to develop after Gelderblom and fellow managers became increasingly alarmed by water restrictions‚ which still require Capetonians to use less than 50 litres of water a day.

“As Cape Town was hit with level 6B water restrictions‚ we started looking at alternative methods of water production‚” explained Gelderblom.

“We decided our best option was to have boreholes on site‚ which would be cleaned by a treatment plant to a drinking standard.”

GrandWest continues to use treated municipal effluent to irrigate its gardens‚ but water for human use now comes from the 400‚000-litre tank next to the casino. The purification plant uses a combination of reverse osmosis‚ ultra-violet lights and advanced filtration to clean the water.

Even though GrandWest no longer needs municipal water‚ it plans to continue its efforts to conserve it.

“Now that we have our own water it doesn’t mean we’re irresponsible. We still have the same water restrictions in place‚” said Gelderblom.