Drought will be our end

‘Vryheid Resident’ writes:-

A RECENT LETTER in the Vryheid Herald highlighted again the perilous position we are in regarding the water supply for Vryheid, Bhekuzulu and Lakeside. In fact for more areas than these three because the municipal tankers supply water to informal settlements, and those tankers get their water from the same source.

That source is the storage dams that hold our water – Grootgewacht, Bloemveld and Klipfontein.

The first two we have seen in recent years dry up completely when we have even relatively minor droughts. We thus rely on Klipfontein, but the demands on Klipfontein cannot be sustained.

Years ago the Vryheid Herald pointed out that at the time that Klipfontein was conceived back in the late 1970s, back in the days when there was still the Group Areas Act and KwaZulu was a separate government, they could have had no concept of the local demands made on the dam. I imagine that at the time, and based on Vryheid’s growth only, they might have thought that Klipfontein would supply Vryheid’s needs for maybe 70 to 100 years.

The dam was completed in 1983 and filled by cyclone Domoina in February 1984, and 30 years later Klipfontein’s capacity is already inadequate. Consecutive years of drought will see us in dire straits, because there are thousands and thousands more households demanding water.

Klipfontein was designed for a second phase which would see the dam wall’s spillway being raised. Perhaps originally they saw that being necessary in 100 years time. It is necessary now.

Mark my words – if we don’t do it now, we are in for a very rough time in the future. We can live without Eskom’s product, we cannot live without water.