Electricity outages causing a backlog in water supply to local communities

Silulumanzi has stated that there will be water interruptions to some areas of Mbombela and surrounds following a major backlog in water supply due to the electricity outages in Mbombela.

A statement by Silulumanzi said that the electricity outages were causing a backlog on water supply to communities. The daily electricity outages result in the Regional Water Treatment Plant located in KaNyamazane being off for minimum of two hours every day.

“When the electricity is switched off from the Eskom grid, due to stage 4 load-shedding, then it means eight hours are lost,” said the statement.

“This means that for up to eight hours we are not able to abstract water from the river, purify the water and distribute as per the agreed schedule,” said the statement.

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“The Water Treatment Plant needs to follow a strict ‘stop and start procedure’ to operate safely. To stop a Water Treatment Plant of this size, with maximum capacity of 60 million litres per day, would normally require 20 to 30 minutes.

“To restart the plant again, can take 30 to 40minutes at a time. If you add 50 minutes to each stage of load-shedding, it means the down time for the water treatment plant is 11.5 hours, during which we are not able to supply water out of the plant.”

“The above means that only 50% of the daily water demand is able to be pumped into the water distribution system.”

The statement said the Nsikazi water supply system can take up to four days on full capacity just to catch up with the water distribution schedule to all areas dependent on supply.

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“Even if load reduction is cancelled, we will still need four to five days just to catch up to get back to the agreed scheduled water supply,” said the statement.

It said that schoolchildren who are dependent on meals from the school feeding schemes are also negatively affected due to lack of cooked meals during school hours and even afterwards, in their homes.

“Some of these children are from child-headed households. The massive and increasing number of illegal water connections on bulk water pump lines is seriously hampering the filling up of reservoirs and thus causing major water leaks.

“Some of these illegal connections on the system are not located within sight of the main roads and therefore take quite some time to be discovered and repaired.”

The statement said that all of these factors “are worsening the distribution and supply of water in an equitable manner”. “We therefore plead for understanding, logical common sense and patience during these trying times,” said the statement. For all queries, please call 013 752 6839 or email enquiries@silulumanzi.com.

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