Loadshedding leads to water outages
This statement seeks to inform Port Alfred residents why they are currently experiencing water outages and what Ndlambe Municipality is doing to remedy the situation.
Stage 6 loadshedding is the major contributor to this challenge in Port Alfred:
● Every stage of Port Alfred’s water process requires power from source to treatment plant; at the treatment plant; from treatment plant to distribution lines.
● During loadshedding there are fewer hours during which water can be pumped to the treatment plant, from all sources During loadshedding, almost all the pumps associated with bulk water treatment and supply are down: there is little or no water getting to the treatment works or distribution lines.
Port Alfred normally gets its water from:
● Sarel Hayward Dam
● RO plant: 2ML/day
● RO Plant: 1ML/day
● Central belt boreholes
● HennieNel boreholes
All these usually feed the water treatment plant and all of these are affected by loadshedding.
Mr Herman, of QFS, reported that on 26 June 2022, the 2ML/day RO plant broke down, making even less water available. The cause of the breakdown has been attributed to the frequent switching on and off of the power supply during loadshedding periods.
What is being done to alleviate the problems leading to the water shortages?
● A contractor is on site repairing the damaged control panel at the 2ML/day RO plant;
● Ndlambe’s senior management has lodged an appeal to Eskom for the section of the grid that serves the two RO plants to be exempted from loadshedding;
● The municipality has purchased six generators. Generators have been installed in some of the pump stations extracting water from Sarel Hayward Dam; however, the RO plants require a huge amount of power and so it’s not possible to have generators in those supply systems;
● The municipality is carting was to strategically placed communal water tanks. Water trucks will continue carting water to service the affected areas;
● Residents can purchase water to fill their private household tanks. To arrange this, please call 046 604 5500.
We plead with residents who do have water to use the supply sparingly so that we can distribute the much diminished supply as equitably as possible. ● This media statement was received from Ndlambe Municipality on 5 July 2022.