‘On Friday, residents of the area in Carletonville surrounding Erica Street and the 007 shopping complex started complaining that they had no water. The problem continued the next day and is still an issue, according to Mr Carlos Rebelo, a councillor of the town.
To make matters worse, several pipes also burst in the vicinity. The situation got so bad that by Wednesday, 4 July, even parts of Kaolin Street had been affected.
On Tuesday, the Merafong City Local Municipality confirmed that the problems stemmed from a brand new sinkhole in Bluebell Street. This one is within walking distance from the much larger sinkhole that caved in on this street in 2016. Both sinkholes occurred on the sidewalk that has been built on top of a major water pipeline. As the crow flies, the new subsidence is in close proximity to the sinkhole that recently caved in on adjacent Erica Street.
‘The water supply has been redirected past the sinkhole and residents may experience lower water pressure at stages,’ a municipal spokesperson said.
At the same time, residents of Khutsong were also worried about what seemed to be more ground stability issues where a new reservoir is being built between Ext. 3 and Rest in Peace. This reservoir is being erected because the old one, situated about a kilometre away, had to be decommissioned because a huge sinkhole had developed under it.
Two community leaders working on the project at the time, Messrs. Chucku Kerileng and Teboho Kenneth Foteng, showed the Herald where another sinkhole had already caved in at the site of the new reservoir in November last year. The fact that there is currently no reservoir in Khutsong that can be filled to capacity has resulted in water supply problems coming and going for the past two years.
This week, there was renewed fear that the site where the new reservoir is being built is not fit for this purpose. The Herald received complaints that another sinkhole or cavity had developed at the site.
When the Herald’s journalist arrived at the site with a resident, Mr Jacob Gumede on Monday afternoon, a crane was busy compacting ground into some or other cavity that had occurred at the site.
Employees of the contractor bluntly refused to divulge more information and Kerileng speculated that some of the well-documented caves in the Khutsong area may be situated underneath the new building site.
The concerns of the community are not without merit. The contractor who conducted the geotechnical survey of the site before the project started, previously failed to spot a major Eskom line running underneath it.
‘There are three erosion panels on this site that were never overlooked and that is why we are rehabilitating them. These are not sinkholes but cavities under rocks,’ the municipality hit back when asked about the matter on Tuesday.