Drought funds eagerly awaited
Provincial department keen to formulate plan and tackle water crisis
EASTERN Cape Water and Sanitation Department head Portia Makhanya is waiting anxiously for the allocation of drought relief funding to conceptualise a plan to tackle the water crisis in the new financial year. However, she remains confident of the province’s water supply, stating that “day zero isn’t in our [department’s] vocabulary”.
Makhanya was addressing the media at the Gamtoos Irrigation Board yesterday, which coincidentally marked the start of National Water Week.
The provincial department hosted a tour of the Kouga Dam – sitting at 11.59% – to illustrate the severity of the water crisis in the province.
She said while there were several red flags in terms of the dire water situation across the province, she was confident the province would have enough to supply residents well into the future .
“In this department there is no day zero, we only have pockets of crisis.
“Some of these include the Sarah Baartman region, Nelson Mandela Bay and particularly the eastern regions of the province.
“However, there are always alternatives, drought is not like a flood that can’t be foreseen, so there are always ways to access water – boreholes, augmentation of water supply and desalination are just some of these,” Makhanya said.
“In June we will conduct our annual water resource planning module, whereby we take all of the water supply, reserves and methods and collate them in a massive analysis to see the status of our water supply and plan for the year ahead.
“That module determines whether our current interventions and restrictions are sufficient or need to be increased or relaxed and plan how to best use the precious resource.
“We are very optimistic that things will only get better. And currently we are comfortable, but also fully aware that we are not out of the woods yet.”
She said she was confident that by the end of the month the province would be informed by the national Treasury how much of the R7.7-billion applied for by the province would be received, following its reclassification of the water crisis to a national disaster.
“The tendency has been, as part of interventions within a municipality, that they would plan on refurbishing boreholes, upgrade this or that, then there will be more water available. Unfortunately, that funding does not look at operations and maintenance.
“That should be planned for as you collect revenue. You should maintain your infrastructure. The intervention must respond directly to the impact of drought. So for example, instead of refurbishing you can drill new boreholes because then you are abstracting from a new water source.”
Asked about the possibility of dredging certain dams, Department of Water and Sanitation engineer Glenn Daniell said it was not viable to dredge dams in the western region of the province as the level of silt in the dams was too minimal.