Water woes in Mbombela and White River
The water supply to much of West Acres was severely affected by two broken pipes in the area, and most residents went without from about 09:00 on Monday.
While water has been restored to West Acres following a 30-hour outage, White River has also been plagued by multiple water disruptions and outages over the past few weeks.
Silulumanzi started the repairs on Monday and discovered another pipe running alongside was also broken. The spokesperson for Silulumanzi, Richmond Jele, said the water had been fully restored to the suburb two nights ago after a special fitting had to be manufactured and then fitted for the second broken pipe.
Meanwhile, a White River resident, Nicholas Zahlten, said they had had issues with water since July 29, and only had about 16 hours’ water supply last week.
“The latest (issue) started with a valve. For two days we had no water as they were apparently waiting for parts to be manufactured. Then finally they said the work was complete and we would have water soon. They closed up the hole,” said Zahlten.
“It was not even a full day later and the same place sprung a leak and the water was turned off. It was the start of a long weekend. At first no one was on-site, then they arrived and opened up the hole again and apparently could not find the problem. The water came on for a few hours and was then turned off again.”
The City of Mbombela’s spokesperson, Joseph Ngala, said, “Indeed the events of the past two weeks (in White River) are regrettable and were unforeseen. The fact is the pipelines are old and some have reached their design life, and need to be replaced in order to maintain the long-term water supply sustainability of the town.”
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Ngala said with regard to the AC pipeline that had twice sprung a huge leak in Tom Lawrence Street in White River, special fittings had to be manufactured off-site for installation. “The overall aged infrastructure was the major cause and the department is working on the infrastructure replacement programmes. To prevent future bursts, the pipeline will be redesigned in line with the proposed plan and appropriate fittings and material will be installed to handle the current pressure.”
Ngala said the maintenance of pipes is done as leaks became apparent and is attended to by the maintenance teams working in White River on an ongoing basis.
