R50 million drought aid for Eastern Cape

A R50m drought intervention package announced by the national water affairs department yesterday will be spent on water tanks and tanker-trucks for the most vulnerable municipalities in the Eastern Cape, including Nelson Mandela Bay.

Department spokesperson Sputnik Ratau said at the Port Elizabeth City Hall that the move followed an urgent meeting between water affairs minister Lindiwe Sisulu and officials from the municipalities affected by the continuing drought across the province.

“The minister has given the go-ahead for a R50m intervention over the next two months across the affected districts.

“These include Nelson Mandela Bay, Beyers Naude, Sarah Baartman, Ndlambe and Butterworth.

“The assistance will take the form of static rain tanks and motorised tankers.

“The hope is it will help bridge the gap at least until the first summer rains in November.”

Ratau said the aim was that the municipalities would take ownership of the tanks and tankers after the intervention period and continue to use them responsibly to manage their water-supply challenges.

The department’s Eastern Cape head, Portia Makhanya, said the situation in the Eastern Cape was dire.

“We are still in the grip of severe drought and the forecast shows only limited rainfall for the next year or two.”

She said while the average level of dams across the province was 50.6%, this figure did not paint the whole picture.

“Dams on the eastern side of the province are much fuller but there is limited storage.

“However, it is in the west that we have the real problem.”

According to the latest figures from the Bay metro, the average level of its four main supply dams on Monday was 18.74%.

Acting mayor Thsonono Buyeye said the city would be assessing the areas worst hit by poor water supply in the Bay and would be looking to install the new water tanks there.

“We will use the tankers to fill the static tanks so the people in those areas don’t have to wait for the tankers to arrive.”

He said the metro was working hard fixing leaks and called on the public to stick to the 50 litres a person a day limit.

Parts of the metro had already hit “day zero” as their taps had dried up, he said.

“We don’t want that to happen again and with this help from the department and our goal of extracting as much as possible from Nooitgedacht, we should avoid that.”

The Lower Sundays River Water Users’ Association warned last week that the precious 400km conduit linking the Gariep Dam on the Orange River to the Nooitgedacht Water Treatment Works near Addo and Sundays Valley towns and citrus farmers was vulnerable and capacity was restricted.

This was due to frail and badly maintained infrastructure and tardy responses by the department of water affairs and sanitation’s repair teams, the association said.

Asked about this warning especially in the light of the metro’s reliance on Nooitgedacht, water and sanitation department acting director-general Trevor Balzar said while the Gariep-Darlington Dam-Nooitgedacht line had suffered failures, it was still reliable.

The aim was that the temporary repair done on the canal collapse in the Sundays area in 2017 would be made permanent to coincide with the completion of Nooitgedacht phase three in mid-2021, facilitating the metro’s anticipation that it would at that point be able to raise extraction from 170 megalitres a day to 210ML a day.

The damage done by a rockfall to the canal in the Krans section would be repaired during the next dry season, and an upgrade would be done on the Darlington Dam, Balzar said.

“But the Gariep-Nooitgedacht line still has a high level of assurance.

“The system is in hand,” he said.

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