Some residents of the small town of White River still have dirty water coming out of their taps due to pipe breakages.
When such a breakage occurs, soil, pebbles and other debris fall in and cause blockages. This is suspected to have happened during the repairs undertaken recently.

The ward councillor, Rowan Torr, said residents constantly have dirty brown water flowing from their taps due to pipes that keep on bursting, leading to sediment settling in them.
“The load-shedding also has a bad impact on our water supply, because when our reservoirs run dry due to power outages, the silt in those reservoirs gets into the water supply and we end up getting brown water into our taps. My main question is why none of the pump stations have working emergency generators as backup during load-shedding?” he said.

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Torr also said some areas such as Waterkant and Coltshill always have clean water, but even these places are not guaranteed this with the ongoing load-shedding.

The vice chairperson of the White River Ratepayers Association, Pierre du Preez, said load-shedding is not the sole problem. The water is constantly dirty because the asbestos pipes are dilapidated and the water smells of chemicals. “This problem started before load-shedding. The entire water infrastructure needs to be replaced, because even if the water leaks are repaired, the pipes burst again after a few days.”

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He also said it is not safe to drink the water. Residents are expected to pay for the services and buy water for consumption for the safety of their health.

By the time of this being published, the spokesperson for CoM, Joseph Ngala, had not yet responded to several phone calls and text messages from Lowvelder.