Municipality imposes water restrictions

WINTER HASN’T started yet, and AbaQulusi Municipality has imposed water restrictions. An official notice to this effect is among the Legal Notices in this week’s Vryheid Herald.

The restrictions come into immediate effect, and the restrictions will reflect on consumer accounts in July.

Consumers have been divided into 12 categories (see Notice). Homes, for instance, are restricted to 18 kilolitres per month, flat complexes with single metres to 10kilolitres per month, and shops to 10 kilolitres per month.

The penalty for exceeding the limit is R15 per kilolitre.

The rains failed to arrive last summer, and the town’s storage dams are far from full – Klipfontein is just under 60% full (this time last year it was about 98% full). So the situation as winter approaches is serious, since rain cannot be realistically expected until (if we’re lucky) the end of September.

In addition, the storage capacity of the dams has not increased by one litre in the last 20 years, while the number of people depending on the dams’ water has increased considerably.

The problem is worsened by the admission by the municipality that an estimated 49.96%, or very nearly half, of the water it purifies for consumption is “lost”.