the program. the policy is more successful in wealthier municipalities, which have the ability to cross-subsidise water provision for the poor, than in poorer, often rural municipalities. this is one of the reasons why in 2009 the government announced it would review its implementation strategy for free basic water, possibly through registers of poor users. as part of this review process, durban has now changed its implementation of the free basic water policy: households living in properties that are valued above a certain threshold now must prove that their income is below the poverty limit, in order to continue to receive free basic water. the reason for the change was that most of those benefiting from free basic water were not poor. they used less than amount of free basic water – 9 cubic meters per month in the case of durban – for the simple reason that there were two or less residents in the household. affordability there is little information available on their affordability, i.e. the share of water bills in household income. if a household consumes less than the free basic water limit, the share is obviously zero. for a household in cape town that has no sewer connection and consumes 10 cubic meters of water, the monthly water bill is almost r20 or us$2.40. with the poverty line at r500 per capita and month, the monthly income of a four-person household at the poverty line would be r2000, and the water bill would be 1 percent of income. however, according to another source the poverty level in south africa was only r1000 per household, in which case the share of the water bill would be 2 percent of income, and higher for those living below the poverty line. cost recovery in 2010, eleven of the 13 water boards were financially viable. the exceptions were namakwa and bushbuckridge water boards. municipalities owed the water boards more than rand 1.3bn (about us$200 million). there is little information available on cost recovery at the municipal level, partly because revenues and costs associated with water supply and sanitation are not necessarily accounted for separately in municipal budgets. if water services authorities prepare water and sanitation budgets, asset replacement costs (depreciation) are often not included in budgets. furthermore, the policy of free basic water leads to deficits in the supply of these services. municipalities cover these deficits in large part through the "equitable share" transfers from national government. investment according to the 2008 infrastructure barometer published by dbsa and based on figures provided by the national treasury, total municipal investments in water supply and sanitation in 2007 were 13.4 billion rand (us$1.9 billion at the 2007 exchange rate), broken down as follows: 5.6 billion rand for water supply by municipalities 4.7 billion rand for sanitation by municipalities 1.0 billion rand for water resources development by water boards 1.0 billion rand for water resources development by dwaf 1.1 billion rand for water resources development by the trans-caledon tunnel authority (tcta) municipal investments in the sector increased substantially from 2001 when they were about four times less than in 2007 at 2.8 billion rand. in 2010/11 total spending by the department of water affairs was 8.2 billion rand, including compensation for employees (1.2 bn), consultants for the design and supervision of civil works (0.6 bn) and investments. investments include direct expenditures for tcta and indirect expenditures in the form of transfers to water boards and water service authorities (municipalities), mostly for dams, bulk water transfers and water treatment plants. the largest project under construction is the de hoop dam which is part of the olifants river water resources development programme that provides water for mining and municipal uses. financing municipal water and sanitation investments were financed from the following sources in 2003–06: 51% through inter-governmental grants; 19% through borrowing; and 30% through internal cash generation. the larger municipalities rely more on loans and on internal cash generation, while the smaller ones depend more on grants and other sources of funding. wealthier municipalities partially finance free basic water through cross-subsidies from non-residential users and local tax revenue. all municipalities receive a constitutionally mandated share of national tax revenues as an unconditional recurrent grant, called "equitable share". one of its objectives is to offset the cost of free basic water and free basic electricity. the formula provides higher grants to those municipalities that have a high number of poor among those that receive water services. if a municipality increases access to water, its share in the transfers thus also increases. the number of poor is determined through census data, which – according to some municipalities – underestimates the actual extent of poverty. in the 2012/13 budget the total equitable share was rand 37.8 billion (us$4.6bn). in addition there is a municipal infrastructure grant (mig). the mig programme is aimed at providing all south africans with at least a basic level of service by the year 2013 through the provision of grant finance to cover the capital cost of basic infrastructure for the poor. in the 2012/13 budget the allocation for migs was rand 13.8 billion (us$1.7 billion). in addition, there is a capacity building grant. all these grants are administered by the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (formerly the department of provincial and local government).