No power, now no water?
Metro, district councils hold the line as water supplies under pressure
Load-shedding is taking its toll on the most precious commodity of all: water.
While Buffalo City Municipality has made contingency plans, in certain instances these can only cover load-shedding up to the current stage 4 level and may not remain in place where additional conservation of energy is required.
It has been reported that government is already planning for stages 5 and 6 load-shedding, in terms of which residents could be without power for 12 hours a day.
In the Amathole District Municipality (ADM), the situation is already beyond critical.
Struggling to counter the affects of the drought that has ravaged many parts of the Eastern Cape, ADM confirmed to the Dispatch on Wednesday that load-shedding was wreaking havoc with the water supply to the district’s estimated one million residents.
The affected local municipalities are Mnquma, Mbhashe, Great Kei, Amahlathi and Raymond Mhlaba. The district includes towns like Butterworth, Dutywa, Chintsa, Morgan’s Bay, Haga Haga, Cathcart and Fort Beaufort.
“ADM has been severely affected by Eskom’s load-shedding, which has a negative impact on our role of rendering water services to our communities as most of our water schemes utilise electricity for daily operations,” said ADM spokesperson Nonceba Madikizela-Vuso.
“The water flow to communities is constantly disturbed which results in delays in the recovery of the system even when electricity is back.”
Electricity is used in the treatment facilities and pump stations to distribute the water.
“During load-shedding, we are unable to treat water or distribute it to the supply reservoirs. Unfortunately, we do not have sufficient storage capacity in our reservoirs to keep the pipelines full during load-shedding and it takes some time for the systems to recover once power is back on. With the constant outages, however, the systems are not fully recovering before the next outages are implemented,” Madikizela-Vuso said.
The cash-strapped municipality is already planning on introducing water cuts to defaulters. It is owed a combined R1bn by government, businesses and residents for water services. Butterworth has water restrictions in place.
BCM appears to be on a knife-edge when it comes to the supply of water during load-shedding. There are nine water supply systems providing potable water to residents.
“With respect to the Umzonyana supply system that supplies treated water to East London and Mdantsane, contingency plans were made to exclude the Bridle Drift pump station and Umzonyana water treatment works from load-shedding,” said BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya.
“(But) this is only true for load-shedding up to stage 4. The contingency measures may not remain in place with higher load-shedding stages where additional conservation of energy is required.”
Because the King William’s Town water treatment works was embedded in the power grid, it could not be exempted from load-shedding, he said.
“Currently the treatment plant is managing to meet the demand. In the event of implementation of stage 5 or 6 load-shedding, there will be issues. Contingency plans are currently being [considered] to address the possibility of more load shedding schedules.”
The two boreholes supplying Majali and Kidd’s Beach are also being affected by load-shedding, although this was “somewhat remediated” by the storage capacity of the relevant reservoirs with 1.5 and five 5 days’ storage capacity respectively.
“The Nahoon, Laing, Dimbaza and Peddie water treatment works are owned and operated by Amatola Water. Potable water from these treatment works is procured by BCM and reticulated to consumers.
“The sustained operation of the treatment works during load-shedding is the responsibility of Amatola Water. Likewise with the Kei Road water treatment works which is owned and operated by Amathole District municipality,” Ngwenya said...
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