Two Bits – 5 June 2015

This is the first week of June, can you believe it! Glorious weather, the sea is brilliantly clean and like a lake and temperatures are pleasantly warm.
Of course the sea is clean because there has been no rain and, if you examine the rainfall charts, there is unlikely to be any for some while. Add to that the phenomenon of El Nino and prospects of rain recede into the far distance.
Hazelmere Dam is currently at 35% capacity and unless there is a miracle it will run dry mid-July.
I am told that Umgeni Water is fed up with the Courier for publishing critical reports about the water situation. Actually, I thought we’d been quite upbeat about the emergency pipeline transferring water from the Tongaat River. That is, until we were told that, Ta da!, the project is finished and ready to pump “8 to 12 million litres a day”.
So I sent reporter Jacqui Herbst out to inspect the results. She returned with photos of a) a dry end of the pipeline and b) showing that it ended 1.5 km from the dam.
Oh no, said Umgeni Water, we obviously haven’t grasped the truth of the situation. The project had been completed as planned and the pumping was proceeding. The pipeline was meant to end where it did, because it would flow down an old river bed. Oh, right.
These words of assurance came from Umgeni headquarters in ‘Maritzburg. They know best. The lack of water issuing from the end of the pipe was obviously a figment of our imagination.
Look, we don’t go out of our way to pick fights. Life is difficult enough as it is. We have to take people’s word for many things, but when we can see with our own eyes that something is not happening, then that’s what we report.
This week I received an indignant letter from member of the Umgeni Water board (see this page), berating reader Markus Kämpf for calling for heads to roll over the pipeline idiocy.
Mr Graham Atkinson says with authority, from his lofty perch in Howick: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating in that the pipeline is delivering the planned quantity of water into Hazelmere Dam.”
Jacqui went back to the dam this Monday morning and took a picture of the end of the pipeline. There is not one drop of water in sight. She returned on Monday afternoon and there was indeed a small flow of water. It did flow along an old river bed and into the dam, but what reached the dam after 1.5km of sand was a trickle. It certainly isn’t going to fill the dam.
I wonder if readers are familiar with the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes? If not, I summarise:
A vain Emperor who cares about nothing except wearing and displaying clothes hires two swindlers who promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or “hopelessly stupid”. The Emperor’s ministers cannot see the clothing themselves, but pretend that they can for fear of appearing unfit for their positions. Finally the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor marches in procession before his subjects. The townsfolk play along with the pretence, not wanting to appear stupid. Then a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretence, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all!
I’m sorry, Umgeni Water, just because you keep saying something is true, doesn’t mean it is! It’s like the ‘fire pool’ at Prez Zuma’s palace. It’s a swimming pool.
By the way, I did like one reader’s comment on Facebook about the chicken run that the police minister has declared essential to Nkandla’s security. The reader pointed out that JZ would live to regret it, because the chickens would be clucking ‘deklerk deklerk’ all day and he would feel oppressed!
He, he, he.
But I digress. Yes, there is we have established there is intermittent water in the pipeline, but most disappears before reaching the dam. Why on earth wasn’t the pipeline extended for another 1.5km? Run out of money? No reply.
I just hope, for all our sakes, that there is a Plan B for when the taps dry up. Sorry for being such a wet blanket, Umgeni Water, (pardon the expression) but you seem to have shown that contingency planning isn’t your strong suit.
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The rule for a happy life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.