During February , Mr Hennie Pistorius, representing Zuikerbosch, submitted a written proposal to Rand Water to increase the quantities of sludge to be removed from Panfontein the Zuikerbosch proposal. The executive summary of the Zuikerbosch proposal reads as follows:. The upgrade results in sufficient capacity for another years after which a similar upgrade will be required to ensure effective operation of the facility.
Zuikerbosch Biocal can increase the sludge removal to an estimated Rtt per annum by increasing the geographical size of the market. The increased market will be ensured through strategically positioned depots in the major grain producing area of South Africa. This increase in sludge removal will eliminate the need for future capital expenditure to increase pond capacity. Increasing the market share will have the following benefits for Rand Water:. Rand Water can ensure the operation capacity of the facility by subsidizing the transport of sludge to strategic depots within a km distance from Zuikerbosch.
It was to the effect that the removal of increased quantities was possible provided the sludge is removed to farmers beyond the km radius from Panfontein, but that would translate into increased transportation costs, which Rand Water should subsidize by way of a transport subsidy payable on each ton of sludge removed.
The benefit to Rand Water would be the increased capacity of the available empty drying beds and the elimination of the need for future capital expenditure to increase pond capacity. The Zuikerbosch proposal, it is common cause, formed the basis of the tender invitation. Rand Water selected two entities as the successful bidders, the joint venture being one. All work shall be undertaken in accordance with the terms and conditions of the RFP. The tender is awarded based on the information contained in the tender document and in line with Rand Water Supply Chain Management Policy.
Rand Water considers the information contained in the tender document as a material aspect of the contract and should there be any significant change in the equity situation of your company or close corporation during the duration of the contract, Rand Water reserves its rights in law to take any appropriation action in order to deal with the changed status.
Should the SLA agreement not be concluded, Rand Water would not be bound to enter into agreement with yourself. The presently relevant terms of the contract were the following:. Penalties shall only be applied at the end of the initial duration to the contract.
This clause relating to Penalties shall survive termination of the contract. The Contractor shall remove tons of sludge from Panfontein site over a period of 12 twelve months. Sludge may only be taken to a distance greater than Km from Panfontein site. Under this Agreement, sludge may not be supplied to any customer, consumer, depo or end user within a Km radius of Panfontein site. The Contractor shall be responsible for all costs incurred for the collection, processing and removal of sludge.
The Contractor shall ensure that the removal of the sludge, transport, utilisation, storage or disposal of this material by themselves or a third party to whom sludge was supplied is done in accordance with all Acts, legislation, local by-laws and regulations governing the environment, and in accordance with all permits issued by Government Departments to Rand Water.
The Contractor shall supply Rand Water Panfontein with weekly figures of the tonnage of sludge removed for the previous week, on the Monday of the following week figures supplied weekly.
The Contractor will not remove the sludge for any other purpose, other than for use in the Agricultural market and not closer than Km from Panfontein site.
Any other intended use of the sludge must be disclosed to Rand Water and written permission obtained from Rand Water, prior to removing the sludge from Panfontein site for this intended use. According to the joint venture, it had removed the sludge before the contract was awarded to it in accordance with an arrangement between Rand Water and itself in terms of which it was agreed that the joint venture could proceed with the removal of sludge as from 1 April at its own risk, in other words, if the joint venture was not awarded the contract it would not have been entitled to payment of the transport subsidy.
According to the joint venture it removed 55 The letter reads thus:. Please be advised that Rand Water has picked up certain irregularities in respect to the above contract. In light of these irregularities we require that you immediately stop with the removal of the sludge, until the parties can meet.
Kindly provide us with two dates and times for next week in order that a meeting can be arranged. Further, please note that the halting of the removal of sludge commences with immediate effect and as such Rand Water will, from tomorrow, refuse access to your vehicles. We await your response hereto as a matter of urgency. The contract was thus terminated with effect from 31 October The joint venture was further advised:. In regard to invoices submitted by you Rand Water hereby declares a dispute in terms of the dispute resolution clause of the Agreement as a result of the weigh bridge discrepancies.
Accordingly Rand Water is unable to accept liability for any of the invoices submitted. The relevant parts of the arbitration clause included in the contract, were the following:.
The proceedings shall be in terms of the Arbitration Act, Act 42 of as amended subject to the provisions of clause The parties hereby specifically exclude all rights of appeal, which might otherwise be conferred upon them by law. Therein two separate claims were raised: an accrued rights claim for payment of R23 By agreement between the parties the accrued rights claim was to be determined first and the damages claim postponed for later determination.
The arbitration hearing in respect of the accrued rights claim commenced on 31 August and proceeded until 8 September , from 11 December until 17 December , from 29 February until 3 March , and the closing arguments were heard on 4 and 5 May Ms Heidi Vorster testified on behalf of Rand Water. In its statement of claim the joint venture averred:. The Claimant duly performed in terms of the Agreement and more specifically the Claimant:.
On or about 2 July, 3 July, 11 July and 10 April , the Claimant in substitution of the invoices pleaded in paragraph 9. ZB Biocal failed to provide for and ensure the meaningful involvement of Taroline in the business;.
The claimant failed to ensure that transport services for the removal of sludge were provided by a Black Economic Empowerment entity it identified and undertook to use for that purpose, Senosi Trading Pty Limited. Instead, the claimant made use of transport services provided by a third party, PBD Logistics Pty Limited, which was neither a Black Economic Empowerment Entity nor nominated and identified by it for that purpose.
Pursuant to the interim award, Rand Water paid the sum of R2 On 13 May , the arbitrator made an award in terms of which Rand Water was ordered to pay the further sum of R21 The arbitrator arrived at the sum of R21 The resultant figure is R21 In this regard the first question which arises is whether the removals of lime which occurred before 2 May fall within the ambit of the contract.
I see no reason why not. I have been presented with very detailed and full evidence of the procedure adopted. First, the empty truck is weighed and the date and time is recorded; then, the loaded truck is weighed and the date and time is again recorded.
The difference between the two weights provides the weight of lime for which payment is sought. All of the aforegoing and more is meticulously recorded and has been made fully available to the defendant. What is absent from such evidence is any attack at all on the net weight of lime the claimant contends for in any of its deliveries. Wessels gave cogent and credible evidence on deliveries to the Vrede Depot and Vrede Farmers. Smit gave equally convincing evidence on deliveries to Orkney Depot.
De Wet gave convincing evidence on the total weight supplied to Limecrop. He satisfied me nevertheless principally because he testified that his company had paid for the weight of the lime it received and had been paid for such weight by its customers. There had been no complaints of short delivery. Incidentally, dividing the total of 59, The claimant proved those by its uncontested documentary evidence and by Vorster herself having stated she was satisfied with Senekal.
As I have already stated the memory stick in Exhibit G contains, I believe, about 1 loads in respect of all deliveries other than the Standerton deliveries and the deliveries which occurred before 18 June The number of Standerton loads representing 19, tons at 40 tons per load, and in respect of which there is nothing on the memory stick, must have been about loads. In A Furthermore A It is interesting to note too, as counsel for the claimant pointed out, that A contains references to weighbridge tickets and other information regarding the period April in which there were no weekly reports indicating that, despite this, the defendant had the relevant documentation in its possession.
A contains the coordinates of the loads of each order. Each of these is stated to be more than kilometres from the Panfontein site save for one, in respect of LC, which is stated to be kilometers from such site.
None of this was challenged before me. Grobler who gave evidence on Exhibit G concluded his evidence on 17 December after which the matter was postponed and he was cross-examined on Exhibit G on 2 March De Wet gave very convincing evidence on all the Standerton distances and none of this was seriously challenged. He also persuaded me that the point of delivery of LC was more than kilometers from Panfontein.
Allpay is distinguishable. There the court declared the contract concerned invalid at the behest of a competitor. Here the defendant alleges in paragraph 7. No weekly reports were supplied for the period 1 April to 1 May The weekly reports provided thereafter arguably do comply with the clause.
The tonnages and distances stipulated for are provided as are the dates. And so this defence fails too. Furthermore, most of the deliveries in respect of which counsel for the defendant made its with prejudice offer were to Orkney Depot.
On the limited facts before me the defence fails. The court will always be most reluctant to interfere with the award of an arbitrator, as the parties have chosen to go to arbitration instead of resorting to the court; they selected their tribunal and they agreed that the award of that tribunal would be final and binding.
They cannot then be heard to object to the award except on very limited grounds. Moreover, in order to achieve the goals of private arbitration, the Constitution requires a court to construe the statutory grounds for setting aside an award reasonably strictly in the context of private arbitration. Footnotes omitted. An arbitral tribunal exceeds its jurisdiction if it decides the matter on a basis not covered by the pleadings. Sedimentation is the oldest known method of water purification.
It has been employed extensively for thousands of years. Although it is a natural phenomenon, it is aided by the addition of chemical coagulants to produce flocs which are allowed to settle in specially designed tanks, also engineered to remove sludge.
Rand Water uses horizontal flow tanks with retention times of 4 hours and produces water with a turbidity of 5 NTU at the outlet weirs which is considered acceptable for filtration. Sludge disposal. Between and tons of dry sludge are produced each day during the purification process. Here it is dosed with an organic flocculent in gravity thickening plants to aid the separation of the solids from the liquid.
The thickened sludge is pumped onto drying beds where it is dried by evaporation and the clear supernatant fluid is drawn off and returned to the purification system. The sludge consists mainly of calcium carbonate, magnesium hydroxide and complex silicates containing aluminium and iron. Phase separation of the sludge takes place in a thickening plant. The separation is enhanced through adding between 0.
The use of lime as a coagulant raises the pH of the water to about 10,5 which is very unstable and conducive to scale forming. After sedimentation, the water flows into carbonation bays where it is stabilized by bubbling carbon dioxide gas, obtained from the lime-burning kilns, through the water. This reduces the pH to between 8. Following carbonation, the water passes into the filter houses where it flows through rapid gravity sand filter beds of finely graded silica sand and pebbles.
The remaining suspended particles are removed at this stage. The latest filters constructed have a fine sand layer, mm thick, supported on a mm gravel layer. Filters are covered to exclude light to less than 25 lux to prevent algal growth on the filters.
After filtration, the water has a residual turbidity of 0,5 NTU or less. The filter backwash water is treated to remove organics, heavy metals, bacteria and other contaminants which concentrate in this water before being recycled back to the inlet of the filters.
Primary disinfection. The water leaving the purification works is disinfected with chlorine to kill micro-organisms, bacteria and any viruses that may be present in the water. There are no chlorine contact chambers and the mixing takes place in the pipelines.
Secondary disinfection by chloramination. Chlorine, although an excellent disinfectant, does not remain active for much longer than 6 to 8 hours. Disinfection needs to be repeated but this time with a less powerful agent that will remain active for long periods so that the water may be protected right up to the end consumer. This is achieved by dosing chlorine and ammonia at the booster pumping station in the correct mass ratio of not less than and forming the monochloramine in situ.
The monochloramine, although less active than chlorine, then protects the water against bacterial regret for periods of up to 8 days. You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page. Turn on more accessible mode. Turn off more accessible mode. Skip Ribbon Commands.
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