SA's water treatment works are in a poor to critical state and monitoring water quality was also becoming an increasing problem. These were among some of the issues the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research [CSIR] raised on Wednesday. …CSIR senior researcher specialising in water quality and aquatic ecology James Dabrowski said about half the country's waste water treatment works were in a poor to critical state, due to infrastructure, capacity, and governance issues. Due to urbanisation, the treatment plants could not handle the volume of effluent. "It’s an infrastructure problem that will need large amounts of money to sort out."