One of the keys to sustainable development is to develop a resource just to the peak point of its demand, and not to flood the market, if the pun can be excused. Residents of Johannesburg s townships, the final consumers of LHWP water, collect water from apartheid-era systems that waste up to 50 percent of water piped to them. The Bank decided to continue with the project without a thorough analysis of DSM or the possibility for a delay, arguing that the need for greater supply was inevitable, and that a delay would drive up construction costs. The second dam, called Mohale, is now underway. Critics fear that moving forward with the dam before the water is needed will stall demand-management projects, and needlessly increase the cost of water at a time when the South African government is undertaking the expensive venture of improving water service to millions of people in the townships.
Water is one product of the project, but power is another.
In an effort to prevent the permanent impoverishment of these people, the governments of South Africa and Lesotho promised in the LHWP Treaty that affected people will be enabled to maintain a standard of living not inferior to that obtaining at the time of first disturbance . To the parastatal building the dam, with a strong vested interest and single minded focus in believing that a superior standard of living relates to being connected to a power grid, this promise was planned to be fulfilled by providing electricity to 10 remote villages located near the dams, within six years. That is where the project ended. LHDA officials told the village residents that they must now take the initiative and ask the LEC to connect them to the transformer. Not surprisingly, the transformer stands unused amidst a sparse collection of thatched, mud and stone huts while villagers continue to gather brushwood and dung to fuel their fires.