A RECENT water outage in Glenashley has reignited calls for the eThekwini Municipality to consider a proposal to migrate the area’s water supply so that it is fed off a different reservoir.

Glenashley is fed by the Virginia Reservoir. Residents have proposed that the area of more than 600 homes be fed by the Sunningdale Reservoir. They say this will take the strain off the Virginia tower and reservoir which feeds several areas across wards.

In recent years the City has grappled with water supply challenges which has led to prolonged outages. A recent pipe burst left some residents in the Glenashley area without water for close to four days.

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Marion Avenue resident, Vic de Sousa, a chemical engineer, explained he had proposed the migration of water supply.

“Twenty years ago this pocket was fed by the Glenashley Reservoir, however, that was decommissioned and we were migrated and fed from the Virginia Reservoir. That reservoir feeds a number of areas including Glen Hills, Glen Anil, Virginia and even parts of Greenwood Park. In my opinion the reservoir is oversubscribed and the proposal to migrate water supply would take strain off Virginia.

“What is of concern is that there seems to be no infrastructure upgrades and large scale developments continue to be done in the area. We’ve said to the City don’t do any developments until you’ve done maintenance or upgraded and de-bottlenecked the existing infrastructure because the existing infrastructure is bursting at the seams,” he said.

Singh, the Ward 35 councillor, confirmed the the proposal was under consideration.

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“At the last public meeting held in Glenashley, a representative of the water department was invited and he gave a report to mention it is in consideration at the moment. It is still in design and planning and we are letting that process unfold. We have to remember when they take an area off a particular reservoir and migrate that supply to another reservoir, it could have a major impact on the reservoir itself. Sunningdale is a very stable reservoir we never have issues with. We have motivated for the move to take place but it doesn’t move like it moves in a corportate sector. I will call for another public meeting with the department again to address the community on that specific proposal,” he said.

Another suggestion made was for the municipality to recommission the Glenashley Reservoir, however, Singh revealed that as far as he understood, that was far too costly.

“It would cost in hundreds of millions of rands to refurbish the Glenashley Reservoir and put it back into use. Because it would be too costly the proposal would not be considered as a potential answer to water supply issues,” he said.

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