Dundee and Glencoe have been without water since Wednesday with the higher-lying areas suffering the most.

The cut has been blamed on ongoing power failures at the Tayside extraction point on the Buffalo River from where Endumeni receives all its water.

In a statement, Umzinyathi District Municipality said:

“The interruptions with the electrical supply have been going on since last week and have caused the pumps at Tayside to trip more than once in a day and this has resulted in the loss of two to five hours a day of raw water being pumped from the Buffalo River to the Biggarsberg plant.

“An electrical contractor was sourced to check the installations in the Tayside Pump Station. A meeting has been requested with Eskom to establish the reason for the outages and their plan in minimising further power interruptions.
“A constant supply of water from the river is required to the plant in order to maintain healthy reservoir levels and to be able to provide customers with an adequate supply of water within the timeframes as indicated.”

On  March 1 there’s a planned shutdown at the Tayside pump station in order to replace a faulty valve at the high lift pump station and to conduct necessary repairs. The planned outage will start at 6am to 4pm on that day.
“Stronger restrictions are being implemented on the system to build adequate reserves for this outage in order to have water reserves available. Dam levels are still alarmingly low and communities are urged to report any water leaks and to use water sparingly and to refrain from using hosepipes for any reason as the drought is not over yet.”