R4.5b for water infrastructure upgrade
A water infrastructure upgrade of R4,5b is on the cards for Lepelle Northern Water (LNW) after the provisional budget was approved by the national water department.
The infrastructure upgrade comes at a time where the current aging infrastructure - still from the 1950s - contributes to the water supply challenges faced by the water entity.
Speaking at a closed media session LNW’s acting chief executive, Elias Moeng, the board chairperson, Dr Nndweleni Mphephu and acting general manager of operations and maintenance, Lebo Sebola exclaimed that the project won’t affect any water supply as the various plants and infrastructure to be upgraded will not be stopped but doubled with parallel water lines and plants.
Sebola says the upgrade will target both the Ebenezer and
Olifants water supply schemes and the designs for the upgrade have already been made available.
“The project is set to start in
July and we are anticipating that it will be completed by 2025 based on its magnitude. In the meanwhile we will continue with the conditional assessment of our equipment and infrastructure and our maintenance team is always available to attend to any pipe bursts or leakages.
“LNW will continue to work with the Polokwane Municipality on any planned maintenance projects.”
She emphasised that the working relationship between LNW and the municipality will be kept running to ensure that there is proper communication during the planned maintenance.
The water entity has also applied for an increased water use licence which will allow it to extract more water from the various water sources and if the licence is approved, Polokwane will see an increase of 27 megalitres a day to top up the current supply of 60 megalitres from the Olifants water scheme.
Moeng says vandalism and theft at some of their stations is also a challenge across the province.
“Our stations have camera footage that is constantly monitored, but we still struggle with vandalism at various points across the province. We do, however, believe that the root cause of the vandalism is inaccessibility to water.
“If we can address the water challenges, then people will not be tempted to break into our stations to get water, although we do have instances where the theft is not related to the water challenges.”
The LNW team outlined that apart from the vandalism and aged infrastructure, load-shedding also affects the water supply as the plants are not operational without electricity.