Water restrictions will take place in areas supplied by the Wiggins Treatment Water Gravity System from 8am to 4pm,” said the City.
The eThekwini Municipality plans to implement water restrictions on Tuesday in areas supplied by the Wiggins Treatment Water Works Gravity System ahead of a major shutdown by uMngeni-uThukela Water (UUW) in August.
This newsflash was shared by eThekwini ward councillors, who posted the announcement in community groups to alert residents.
“The water restrictions will take place on Tuesday, July 23, from 8am to 4pm,” said the City.
The City said the Water and Sanitation Unit will close its valves on Tuesday in order for uMngeni-uThukela to assess work conditions in preparation for the major shutdown next month.
The shutdown is to replace 1200mm diameter sales meters on the gravity bulk pipeline, it said.
“For this assessment to be undertaken by UUW, the City’s valves will be closed, and the scour will then be opened to drain out water from the pipeline.
“This will be done to assess how much water is passing in order to determine if the contractor can replace meters under safe conditions.”
According to the City, the work forms part of measures to curb water losses and to improve water supply to reservoirs supplied through the gravity system. The announcement comes as residents in areas in the central and southern parts of the district, who receive water from reservoirs supplied by the Wiggins Water Works, experienced outages from Friday.
Ward 64 councillor Samantha Windvogel shared an email communication she received from the City’s head of water, Ednick Msweli, in response to her queries about the water outage in Hillary, Sea View and Bellair.
In the email, Msweli said the Wiggins reservoir is not coping with the demand at the moment.
“uMngeni meets contracted volumes. However, current demand is higher than contracted volumes.
“The reservoir at Wiggins Waterworks is low. This impacts on our reservoirs, including the one supplying the Bellair area.
“uMngeni-uThukela is currently building up storage in their reservoir which will lead to our reservoirs recovering,” read the email.
IFP exco member Mdu Nkosi questioned where the demand for water is coming from.
“There are no new houses in eThekwini, there is no new township. There is nothing that has been built, what is the demand?” he asked, calling for more clarity from the City.
Nkosi said leakages need to be addressed in eThekwini as the loss of water has an impact on the current situation. He said there are two issues in the City that need to be attended to.
“The issue of leakages and non-revenue water, where it is not known how much water is being supplied to an area ... We must talk about these facts, we need to face the truth as it is and solve the problems that we are facing,” said Nkosi. The DA’s caucus leader, Thabani Mthethwa, said they had a meeting with water officials on Friday to express the frustrations of affected members of the public. Mthethwa said as a result of the severity of the problem, the party no longer believes eThekwini can self-correct.
“I think the problem is much bigger than eThekwini because it is an issue of supply versus demand in that the demand far exceeds the supply.
“There is a bigger problem and I think we are now at a point where the national government must intervene and keep a closer eye on eThekwini because we can’t go on like this,” he said, adding that uMngeni-uThukela should be the direct supplier.
The eThekwini Municipality and uMngeni-uThukela Water had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication on Monday.
The Mercury