Dry dams: What’s the plan?
There will be outages. Makana’s Manager for Water and Sanitation, Ntombi Tschicela, told a meeting on Monday 15th May at City Hall that we face water outages. The start of this method of conserving the dwindling dam reserves is likely to commence in the second half of July according to Dali Mlenzana, Makana Director of Infrastructure. He clarified, subsequent to the meeting that the interruptions would only be for short durations in order to reduce overall consumption, not for whole days as indicated at the meeting. In response to questions asking when the public can have a say about planned outages, Tschicela replied that there would be plenty of communications so people are given advance information.
In the absence of dam water, apart from boreholes and tankers, the only option is transfer water from the Orange River via the Fish River, but no firm decision has been reached yet.
On 4 May at Full Council a Local Disaster was declared. Under law the District Authority is the competent authority once a local disaster has been declared, who must work with the local municipality to coordinate disaster management. (Disaster Management Act No.57 of 2002, s.54).
Municipal officials are due to meet with the Office of EC Premier today (Friday 19 May).
The process of assessing the impending water crisis in Grahamstown started with a meeting at City Hall on 30 March where experts agreed that the combined dam reserves, at current rate of depletion, and without substantial rains would last a maximum of 4 months. At that time Settlers was at 35% and Howison’s Poort Dam at 94%. Senior staff from Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) also pointed out that the SA Weather Service is predicting a drier than normal period for the next 12 to 18 months.
Background
Grahamstown has two main water sources. Dams to the west and the Fish River to the east. The Orange River is in reasonable condition and provides a reliable supply via James Kleynhans pumping station for the eastern side of Grahamstown. However, the current demand of east Grahamstown is higher than the pumping capacity from James Kleynhans. This is a problem because it means there’s no excess capacity to transfer water to west Grahamstown without diverting supply from other people.
The upgrade of James Kleynhans to double its 10 Ml per day capacity has commenced, but Phase 1 is behind schedule and incomplete. It could take over a year to be ready to pump at 20 Ml, which would go a long way to satisfying all of Grahamstown’s current demand level.
The dams to the west are Settlers, Howison, Jameson and Milner. The last two are not maintained and are nearly empty. Settlers is the main dam, being about seven times larger than Howison.
Settlers declined from 41% on 27 February to 30% on 20 April. Daily readings then showed as ‘ Faulty’ possibly because it is problematic to measure below 30%. In the last few days Settlers has been shown as 30% again, but it is suggested that the level is actually lower.
Howison has some water running in from three streams, but is mostly kept topped up by pumping from Settlers. It has been kept steady at around 95% until last week and on 17 May had declined to 78%.
Polluted waters
The meeting on 15 May, of the Upper Kowie Water, Sanitation and Catchment Management Forum (UKWSCMF) began with an enlightening, if controversial presentation on Makana’s waste water.
The DWS Environmental Manager, David Bligh, presented a catastrophic picture of Grahamstown’s sewage system. As he showed a series of pictures taken within the last month, he explained what was wrong and a number of times pointed out that the problems could be greatly ameliorated by basic mainte- nance and unblocking pipes. There is no doubt that there are infrastructure deficits that need substantial funding to address, but that does not explain all the problems. Among the problems the pipe leading into the Mayfield Waste Water Treatment Works is blocked so the sewage flows past the sewage works into the nearby New Year’s river. The situation isn’t much better at Belmont Valley WWTW where there is no chlorination and there is also an escape of untreated sewage into the Bloukrans river. The problems at BVWWTW are not new and have been covered before in this column, and Makana has received directives since 2013 to improve matters.
Ideally the E.coli count per 100ml water is zero for fresh waterways, while a maximum count of up to 1000 per 100ml is permissible. Of the sites measured around Grahamstown there were figures of 19m and 23m per 100ml near Market Street. The highest was 37m per 100ml. Even downstream of Belmont Valley WWTW in Bloukrans river a figure of 54000 per 100ml was recorded.
The presentation drew an angry response from Cllr Mahbuti Matyumza who stated that “we are one government” and should be working together to solve problems. He invited DWS to bring the presentation to the next Infrastructure Portfolio meeting, of which he is the Chairperson. The next Infrastructure Portfolio meeting is due to be held at 9am on Thursday 15 June.
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Contacts for Makana EnviroNews: Nikki Köhly: n.kohly@ru.ac.za, 046 603 7205 | Jenny Gon: j-gon@intekom.co.za, 046 622 5822 | Nick James: nickjames@intekom.co.za, 082 575 9781 | Philip Machanick: p.machanick@ru.ac.za, 046 603 8635 | Tim Bull: timothybull05@aol.com, 076 289 5122;