Water crisis looming

hree years ago, I wrote a series of articles on the spiralling expenses, questionable contracts, abuse of resources and failure to deliver by Amatola Water on a project that was meant to solve Ndlambe’s bulk water needs.

Among those failures which involved dubious sub-contract work was the reverse osmosis (RO) plant and huge new reservoir just north of Port Alfred, which with related infrastructure for incoming raw water and outgoing brine, cost about R200-million – at the time.

We have heard different stories – that it was never completed and has been sitting there like a white elephant, or that it was actually completed but the contractor was never paid so he will not release the plant.

We have never received a straight answer from Amatola Water. In fact we never received any answers from Amatola Water or the department of water affairs (DWA) about the issues we raised at the time of those stories.

They just ignored them.

One little gem that emerged from documented minutes of meetings leaked to this writer, was how an official at the DWA had a husband who won a contract for a R13m pipeline from Cannon Rocks to Alexandria, and she sat in on this bulk water project’s meetings until she thought it better to recuse herself.

No problem, said the rest of the stakeholders at the meeting, we’ll give you the minutes afterwards. I kid you not.

Then, this same DWA official left the DWA to take up a job with Amatola Water.

Not even the municipality can get answers out of Amatola Water.

Eight or so years after this bulk water project and its “quick wins” started, we still have the same undrinkable tapwater Port Alfred has always had. There’s just less of it now because of drought, and – if our director of infrastructure is to be believed – apparently the water table has been lowered by the drilling of boreholes in Makana.

Where we know such cause and effect to be fact, is how Amatola Water’s deep boreholes in the Oliveburn area detrimentally affected surrounding farms, drying up their own boreholes and wetlands. Some have never recovered, and Amatola did not even get their anticipated yield.

Our tapwater has been worse than usual lately because the municipality has been drawing water directly from the Sarel Hayward Dam rather than the weir at Waters Meeting, and bypassing the balancing dam.

It is of grave concern how rapidly the Sarel Hayward is dwindling. Residents need to take seriously that we are on water restrictions. But our municipality and government need to intervene now before we reach a Makhanda water crisis scenario.

T