Emalahleni- water issue Once again we are in a water crisis. let me first try to explain what happened: 1. I warned you in a similar communication 2 weeks ago that we are experiencing problems at the purification works. At that stage I said the prognosis was not good. The worst happened, we had to decommission two new filters, installed by Rand Water, and following a week where our purification capacity dropped to 60 % we finally late this afternoon got the plant fully operational again, purifying at close too 100% capacity. 2. However, during the past two weeks we had interrupted and lower than agreed water supply from our external source, and at one stage this week, we had nearly no supply for two days. The result of this was that on a daily basis we lost nearly 20% capacity. 3. As our capacity to purify, plus the water supplied to us, is already below the normal daily requirements of the city, we had to make use of all reserves and most reservoirs either ran dry or dropped to below 10% by this morning. 4. The result is that firstly all high laying areas ran out of water, followed by almost all areas throughout the week. This situation illustrates how prone our system is to any problems. We have a system where if a thing goes wrong, it will impact severely on supply to residents, and we do not have purification capacity to built reserves for these situations. Until we can expand our purification capacity, this situation will continue. All we can do is to improve the monitoring of the system, its management and to repairs all leaks, to ensure that the minimum water is wasted. The ultimate solution lies in building more capacity, and that is not possible immediately. However, now for some progress: 5. With our own water supply capacity restored we are in the process of filling the reservoirs. It however takes time and we can not fill the towers until the reservoirs reached a certain level. This implies that areas who directly get their water from reservoirs already have water, but areas depending on water pressure from the towers, still will have to wait some time to be supplied. 6. The rate at which the reservoirs are filled and the critical height is reached to allow pumping to the water towers, normally will be two days, but, the mine has started to supply us again an hour ago, vastly increasing that rate. We now estimate that water towers will start to receive water before midnight, which will allow all areas to receive water again. We are very grateful that this will restore a full supply . 7. The factor which will now mostly impact on how soon all areas have water, is the drawdown by residents to first fill their storage tanks, resulting in a high use, with a limited through put to the towers. Should people not do that, all areas will have water by midnight, but, knowing our current patterns of usage, most likely water will only start getting to higher areas by tomorrow. 8. Please also report any pipe burst immediately, as we are likely to experience some due to air in the system. Finally: 9. I have arranged for water tankers tonight, but after the above news and in consultation with the Director, we are not going to withdraw the current tankers from the hospitals, but, will redeploy them to areas in need should for some reason, not everyone have water by tomorrow late. The reason for this decision is that we do have limited tankers, and if I can prevent us from hiring additional tankers at great cost, I will do so. However, if anybody really experience a severe crisis, and can not wait, send me an sms. 10. Those people who requests for tankers tonight, I am holding these over at this stage,. 11. To the Director and his staff who has again tirelessly worked on stabilising thie situation, my warmest thanks. 12. To all residents, I can only apologise for the inconvenience. I have had communication with more than 150 people on sms and per telephone again today on this matter and the frustration of all struck me hard and illustrate the severe situation we are in. The number of abusive words, aggressive tones, threats I experienced today was somehow balanced with the few constructive discussions and suggestions I received from others. Be assured that my team and I remain committed to improve the functioning of the municipality. Theo Jansen van Vuuren Administrator
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:26:37 +0000
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