Disaster relief organization Gift of the Givers will be helping Makana Municipality find underground water to help ward off a looming Day Zero.
As dams to the west of the city dry up and the beleaguered Makana Municipality fails in its battle to meet demand from the Fish/Orange River water scheme in the East, the foundation has stepped in by delivering thousands of litres of bottled water to desperate citizens.
But Gift of the Givers geologist/hydrologist Dr Gideon Groenewald says they are also seeking to clean old disused boreholes and possibly drill new boreholes in a quest to find longer term solutions for Makhanda which has faced prolonged water outages.
Step one, he told the Daily Dispatch, would be to meet Institute of Water Research staff at Rhodes University and dive deep into its research literature to track down existing but disused boreholes around the city.
“Cleaning up old boreholes is considerably cheaper than drilling new ones so that is where we will start.”
He is also meeting and briefing Makana Municipal staff later today...