UNIVERSITY CITY FACES WATER CRISIS

Main dam less than 30% as Day Zero looms large for city, warns top official

Makhanda, home to Rhodes University and a variety of schools may run out of water soon.

Makhanda west, which is home to Rhodes University, several schools, the city’s prison, industrial area, army base, suburbia and CBD will run out of water in about two months, Deputy Water and Sanitation minister Pam Tshwete was told yesterday.

Makana municipal infrastructure and technical services director Dali Mlenzana said the city faced a major disaster with its main supply dam to the west of the city down to less than 30% due to the drought. Day Zero would happen in about 60 days he warned. Tshwete was meeting Makhanda stakeholders in an effort to understand the water crises the city faces.

Stakeholders did not hold back and it became clear that there were both quantity and quality issues that were a source of major concern as well as anger at local government incapacity which led to massive water leaks from burst pipes being unattended.

A member of Tshwete’s own staff, DWS water regulation director in the province, Andrew Lucas, warned that the problem was not limited to quantity but also quality. He said recent tests showed small amounts of e-coli bacteria in the water and residents should continue to hard boil their drinking water.

He said the treatment systems in the city were under stress and substandard maintenance of these systems could not be tolerated.

“Systems under pressure, as these are, need diligent monitoring.”

This was denied by public safety and community services director Kelello Makgoka, who said there was zero e-coli detected in the water tests for June and the tests for July were still awaited.

Mlenzana said he faced major challenges. He set out in detail how the James Kleynhans water treatment plant to the east of the city – which has ample water supplied via the Orange River scheme – lacked the capacity to treat enough water to supply even communities in Makhanda East.

Water supply had to be throttled or cut off at nights to build up enough treated water to resume supply in the morning. The water was often muddy as the treatment works was treating more water than it was capacitated to treat.

Tshwete said her department would do what it could to assist but warned that DWS was responsible for the dams while local government was responsible for reticulation and the supply of water from the dams to citizens’ taps.

60 days before Makhanda west runs out of water