Ugu District Municipality has said it will take about a week before water supply is fully restored to all areas.
In the meantime, the municipality said it was trying its best to provide relief supply while waiting for the salt levels to drop to below 150 in order to start pumping.
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Water abstraction at the plant has not resumed, leading to taps running dry in most coastal areas between Hibberdene and Ramsgate, and inland areas including Harding, Gamalakhe, Bhobhoyi and Murchison.
Some areas have been without water for up to 14 days.
The situation is dire, with some businesses, like the Umzimkhulu sugar mill, forced to close for the time being.
Hospitals have been particularly hard-hit.
In a statement, the KwaZulu-Natal legislature pointed out that hospital equipment which uses water often had to be switched off until water was available, forcing health institutions to buy water, at huge cost.
Spokesman Wesley Canham said access to clean drinking water and water for ablution facilities was provided by water tankers, which made keeping supply consistent a challenge.
Yesterday (Wednesday) the Department of Education advised schools without water reserves to close at 11am daily for the duration of the crisis.
Although Ugu could not say exactly when pumping would resume or when full supply would be restored, it remained hopeful that water would begin trickling through within a week.
At a press briefing held at the Ugu Disaster Centre yesterday (Wednesday) municipal manager DD Naidoo said interim measures had been put in place to lower the salt levels in the river.
“We contracted Town and Around Civils to manufacture buffer gates so that at high tide, the water is prevented from going past the berm and at low tide, the water from upstream can start pushing the flow downstream.”
Explaining the events leading to the crisis, Mr Naidoo said the abstraction point was situated on the Umzimhhulu river, some eight kilometres upstream.
“Over the years when the river mouth was open, during high tides sea water pushed up, but because of the flow of the river that water then accessed the buffer and pushed the sea water back.
“Since the temporary berm was installed in 2015, the sea water had until now not reached the abstraction point.”
According to Mr Naidoo, over the past few weeks the Umzimkhulwana river, which feeds the Umzimkhulu river,had dried up.
“So there is no flow coming from the Umzimkhulwana into the Umzimkhulu, and the Umzimkhulu’s catchment area has had almost no rain so the flow is minimal.”
He added that before abstraction could begin, salinity levels needed to be below 170.
“Because the salt levels are too high, we had to look at alternatives, and those alternatives included raising the berm as a long-term solution.
“However, permission for this has to be granted by Department of Environmental Affairs and the Department of Water Affairs.
“We brought them on board and they are investigating that option before giving us permission.”
In an attempt to seek urgent solutions, the municipality recently met with officials from the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Umgeni Water and the Department of Water and Sanitation.
Ugu mayor Sizwe Ngcobo apologised profusely for the inconvenience that the crisis has caused and thanked all those businessmen who had gone out of their way to ensure the community received water, often free of charge.
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