Pipeline works “as planned”
What starts as a strong gush of water is reduced to a trickle by the time it reaches the dam.
The emergency pipeline from the Tongaat River is delivering water intermittently into the Hazelmere Dam, though nothing near the eight to 12 million litres a day promised by Umgeni Water.
The Courier team visited the end of the pipeline and Hazelmere Dam twice on Monday. The trips involved a lot of walking and a bit of off-road driving along an old river bed along which water from the pipeline is meant to flow.
There was no water flowing in the morning although the surrounding soil was damp. A drive into the valley along the old riverbed produced no sign of water anywhere.
The pipeline outlet was once again dry when the team arrived in the afternoon and drove up a nearby hill to get a better perspective of the landscape between the end of the pipeline and the dam. In spite of the severe drought, the bush is thick.
When we got back to the end of the pipeline, water had started flowing, indicating that pumps may be turned on and off at certain times of day. We decided to follow the flow of the water and were surprised to come across a small stream meandering down the valley towards the dam.
We walked through the bush to the dam, where a sobering sight greeted us – huge, deep cracks where there once was water and a clear water line way above our heads.
About an hour after water started flowing out of the pipeline, a thin stream of water trickled into the dam at the end of a 1.5 kilometre journey through the valley.
The water flows into the network of cracks, wetting the surrounding soil, eventually converging into a slight stream, about 20 centimeters wide.
What started as a strong gush of water is reduced to a trickle by the time it reaches the dam. It is clear that a lot of water is absorbed along the way by plants and thirsty soil.
However Umgeni Water board member and former CEO, Graham Atkinson, maintains in a letter to the paper that the pipeline has been designed and constructed in accordance with acceptable hydraulic and engineering principles by highly experienced and competent engineers.
Umgeni Water was an organization noted for its professional approach to all projects it undertook, he said.
Whether the quantity of water reaching the dam is what was intended by the R38 million emergency pipeline, remains to be seen.
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