Disaster relief organisation, Gift of the Givers, which has been drilling for groundwater in water-scarce Makana municipality this week struck liquid gold.
Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman on Wednesday said their first borehole site just west of the city would be opened to residents who wished to collect the water in 20l buckets.
The organisation’s hydrologist, geologist and palaeontologist, Dr Gideon Groenewald, and his drilling team hit water at a depth of 145m.
Groenewald said a conservative estimate of its yield would be at least 20,000l a day.
The drill rig is now moving to other sites where he expects even higher yields of water to be found but closer to the surface.
“The aim is to drill at as many sites as possible to provide a sustainable alternative to bottled water which is an emergency stop gap measure.”
Groenewald has supervised the drilling of 200 boreholes across the country with Martyn Landmann drilling company for Gift of the Givers over an eight-month period and providing an estimated 50 million litres of water a day, the organisation said in a statement.
It is also providing animal fodder that was brought in on Wednesday from KwaZulu-Natal to be distributed to emerging farmers in the Makhanda area.
Makhanda and bordering towns falling under the Makana municipality, including Alicedale and Riebeek East have suffered prolonged water shortages over the past few months.
As residents expressed their outrage at the lack of water, news this week trickled out that standard water tests on tap water in November and December showed extraordinarily high bacterial counts.
The municipality moved quickly to try to dispel alarm on Wednesday. It said its January tests had yielded better results with only Riebeek East and one other site failing in terms of the bacterial count.
“All other testing areas/ sampling points comply, meaning it is safe for human consumption,” said the municipality in the statement. It advised residents of Riebeek East to boil water before drinking it.
“The situation is currently being monitored for any possible waterborne diseases.
“ The municipality is doing all in its power to address this situation and even sourcing independent specialist to do water sampling in all our water treatment plants.”
The municipality did not explain the November and December results.
However, the DA has called for an probe into reports that staff at water treatment plants had been told to reduce the amount of chemicals they were using to make the chemicals last longer. This amounted to criminality, said the DA...