Amathole residents urged to use water sparingly as drought lingers

The Amathole District Municipality has asked residents to use water sparingly amid the persistent drought.

This comes just one week after the department of water and sanitation announced that dam levels had dropped by about 6.9%.

In a statement on Tuesday, the municipality said it continued to experience drought conditions in some areas.

This included Bedford in Raymond Mhlaba and Dwesa in Mbhashe.

ADM mayor Nomfusi Winnie Nxawe said: “Although we are currently able to pump water from the Fish River pumping scheme to augment the water supply to Bedford, this system is notoriously unreliable, with regular breakdowns causing water interruptions to communities. Ground water supply in Shixini village in Willowvale has dried up and the Nqabarha North scheme is unable to provide a reliable supply to its communities.

“The situation is dire and we are earnestly requesting our communities to continue to exercise caution and preservation of the little water resource they have.

“In addition, as a district we are pleading with our communities to always keep [some] water on standby in the event of a water outage.”

ADM was in the process of drilling additional boreholes to supplement the existing one.

Department of water and sanitation spokesperson Sputnik Ratau said the Amathole system, which has six dams that serve East London, had dropped from 89.5% to 82.6%.

ADM spokesperson Noni Vuso said it was difficult to quantify how much it would cost to drill boreholes as it depended on the location of the borehole site. “However, it costs about R200,000 to drill a borehole.

“Equipping a borehole can cost anything between a couple of thousand to millions of rands,” Vuso said.

She said the municipality had made numerous appeals, including requests for funds from the provincial disaster management centre from the drought disaster fund.

“Last year the ADM received R1.3m from co-operative governance and traditional affairs after a disaster declaration, and R30m through the water services infrastructure grant,” she said.

The situation is dire ... preserve the little water you have ... keep some on standby