Eight million liters of drinking-water goes to waste
While the area went up in smoke due to intensifying riot action, the river of water streaming through Thos Begbie's property did nothing to douse the flames and merely seeped into storm water drains, going to waste.
The flowing water sprung from a rupture in one of Middelburg’s main water lines that stems from the Rockdale reservoir, which supplies life to the network of suburbs settled along the N11 Hendrina.
Thos Begbie’s Plant Engineer, Mr Louis Dique, contacted www.mobserver.co.za out of frustration when the Steve Tshwete Local Municipality’s response to their report was that “services are suspended by the ongoing riots” 
The rupture was reported to Mr Dique by Thos Begbie security at around 21:30 Thursday night.
When Mr Dique received no joy from the municipality, he contacted Ena Pilodia, who then reported it to the municipality’s civil engineer.
The engineer assured them that he would have contractors arranged to fix the leak, but the river of water kept flowing endlessly until 08:30 this morning, when a team finally showed up to repair the leak.
Mr Dique informed www.mobserver.co.za that more than eight million liters of water had gone to waste by that time, and that the estimated restoration time was another two hours. 
“This amount of water could have easily filled up Athlone dam and we are going to suffer water shortages if we don’t have a good rainy season this year.” Mr Dique concluded.
•A team was dispatched by STLM to repair the leak and are currently at the scene working.
