Angry Blythedale residents complain they have been left without water for 13 days, claiming no urgency is evident from the iLembe municipality to rectify the problem.

And they are becoming increasingly frustrated by what they claim are endless empty promises by the municipality since day one to bring relief.

Blythedale Beach Ratepayers and Residents Association (BBRRA) chairperson, Lisa O’Mant, said water supply was cut on Saturday, March 11.

Today (Thursday), she said of the 250 houses affected, only 30% had received low pressure water since yesterday, but the rest remained dry.

“Throughout last week we received updates about a variety of causes – problems with Umgeni water supply, then broken water lines, then a planned shutdown for 12 hours that lasted 20 hours. All this has led to where we are today.

“Very little correct information was passed on to residents, causing frustration,” O’Mant said.

iLembe water service operations manager for the KwaDukuza area, Elias Bhengu, this afternoon said a pipe supplying water to the area had burst because of stop-start surges caused by bulk supplier Umgeni Water.

The interruptions were caused by failures of the utility’s raw water pumps.

“The Umgeni Lower Thukela pipeline developed leaks and existing leaks became worse. This forced Umgeni to stop supply completely to deal with repairs.

“The district municipality made attempts to carry out emergency repairs within a short space of time, but its efforts were not successful, resulting in delays to reinstate water supply,” Bhengu said.

“Umgeni managed to repair its raw pumps last Saturday, the same day that iLembe completed its own repairs on the pipe. Unfortunately the repairs proved to be ineffective.”

He said as an alternative it was decided to carry out concurrent repairs on the redundant old supply system to Blythedale and managed to bring it to operation on Sunday night..

“The old system is currently operational, but cannot cope with the high demand. As a result, high-lying areas are still compromised.”

Repairs on the main pipeline are at an advanced stage, Bhengu said, anticipating that it will be brought on line by Saturday.

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