We’re heading for a crisis

THERE HAS never been so many people relying on the water held in Klipfontein Dam. When the dam was conceived in the late 1970s, built in the early 1980s, and filled by cyclone Domoina in February 1984, no one could have foreseen the explosion of household numbers in Vryheid, Bhekuzulu and Lakeside (let alone the escalated demands from further downstream the Wit Umfolozi River).

The reality is that there ARE thousands and thousands more households that have mushroomed in and around Vryheid in the last 20 years, each household with any number of people. So, when it doesn’t rain, what would simply be strained capacity could very well become a crisis.

We are heading for such a crisis. If it doesn’t rain in early spring this year, if we have a rainy season like we have just had, the crisis will turn into a complete disaster.

Klipfontein Dam on Saturday exhibited huge areas of “beach” sand. The level of the dam is visually alarming.

Last figures available from the Department of Water Affairs have Klipfontein Dam at just 64.3% as of April 6. It was down 1.7% on the week before. If the dam is going to lose nearly 2% of its capacity each week, and it is probably about 24 weeks until we can remotely expect some spring rains, we are looking at a crisis.

Alarmingly, this time last year, Klipfontein was 100.2% full.

The municipality continues to accommodate sprawling low cost housing schemes, apparently without giving any thought to where the water for these homes is going to come from.

The only solution is to persuade the Department of Water Affairs to raise the spillway wall of Klipfontein Dam, thus, apparently, doubling the capacity of the dam. The dam was designed for this contingency. This would require the heightening or moving of the Vryheid-Ulundi road.

It has to be done. We have no option.

Or must we wait for the disaster first?