Ilembe running out of options

As the Ilembe district gradually runs out of water, the Ilembe district municipality (IDM) is running out of alternative water sources with which to boost supply.

“The department of water and sanitation (DWS) allocated R37 million and the national disaster management centre (NDMC) allocated R9.25 million for short term intervention in the district. These funds have been exhausted but more interventions are still required,” said IDM mayor Welcome Mdabe.

He said the money had been spent on drilling and refurbishment of boreholes, installing JoJo tanks at strategic points in rural areas (to be filled by tankers), buying and hiring water tankers and trucking water to dry areas.

Since the drought relief funding has been exhausted IDM have undertaken to divert R50 million from capital projects for drought interventions and are awaiting DWS’ approval.

He said, during a media tour on Thursday, November 26, that the Darnall and Zamani areas will run out of water by Christmas if it did not rain.

The Umvotshana Dam, built to serve Maphumulo, parts of Ndwedwe, Ntunjambili and Kranskop, has never seen water because of the drought. These areas’ water supply is boosted by water transferred via a 12 kilometre pipeline from the Hlimbitwa River.

Mdabe said people in Maphumulo had no more running water and on average got about 100 litres per household of eight delivered every third day. He said this was because it took the 22 trucks available to the area three days to cover a 150 square kilometre area that hosted 80 000 households.

After drying up completely and people being without running water for three weeks, the Umvoti waterworks can now supply 14 million litres a day to Stanger and surrounds, thanks to IDM opening eight sand mining dams upstream from the extraction point.

Umgeni Water’s Shami Harichunder said there was no way of measuring how long the Umvoti waterworks would yield water.

“Whatever comes into the river is what we yield. If the river is empty, we temporarily rely on boreholes,” said Harichunder.

All the above mentioned water supply systems rely on water from the Tugela River as a backup but Mdabe said he feared that the Tugela was also drying up.

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