Just as the good news came to surface that Witbank Dam’s water levels raised from 38.7% to 94.7% in only two months, the residents got hold onto another problem.
In the early hours of January 21 residents in Churchill Street has been woken up by water streaming out into their gardens and the road.
“I woke up at 06:00 with the noise of water sounding like a stream coming for my house,” Mr Gerhard Gouws said.
Churchill street under water after a 415mm water pipe burst. The residents woke up with the sound of pouring water on Saturday January 21.
As this incident left residents furious about the waste of fresh water just after the big drought the municipal manager, Mr Theo van Vuuren was first to blame. With messages and posts coming from left right and centre on Theo’s social Facebook page he came with the following,
“This week saw a range of problems, starting with the replacement of the couplings at Point C and ended, the bursts main line at Churchill street and then the power outages with the lighting damage last night at Doornpoort.
The Director and his team are full time working on restoring the problem although the unfortunate part on a water system is that lead times are long, unlike with electricity.At this moment we have restored the pumping to the main purification works and water are being fed to the reservoirs. Most reservoirs are at very low levels following the bulk interruption and for areas where we need certain levels to low pressure to be used, it may take more than today to normalise the situation. I also need to caution that when reservoirs run down and we had pipe bursts the water colour may be poor in the initial restoration stages but that will soon wash out. Please be aware of this.
Also I need to urge everyone to not to fill JoJo tanks immediately as this lengthens the restoration time to the rest of the areas. Once all areas have supply this can be done. We also usually experience pipe bursts in events like these when water is restored. To minimise this scouring is done but I also want to urge you to open your taps to allow trapped air to escape when you hear the noise in the pipes outside. We have a system in place to compensate those who may then experience high volumes of air causing their water meters to give inflated readings. Those who experience that problem please contact our offices. The procedure has been published here before and I will ask them to republish it again.
The repair work on the main line at Churchill is not complete but alternative lines are being used and this will not affect water supply. This work will however continue.
There are three areas which have been experiencing prolonged outages now, eMalahleni extension 16 and a portion of Del Judor as well as at Empumuluweni.The last area is purely the result of low water capacity in our system. That area as well as Clewer, Ogies, Phola is served from point B and Point B is dependent on receiving 16 ML from the reclamation plant at Greenside daily. For the recent past the volumes received from that facility was far under this and this is gradually depleting capacity. To date I have not yet received a lasting solution to restore that supply to the agreed level and to mitigate this the NUWATER Package plant is being increased to 20 mega litre (ML) from the current five ML This will in the near future provide welcome relief.
In as far as eMalahleni extension 16 and Del Judor are concerned, we hope that their supply will normalise with the rest of the area. However, once the system is fully operational we will only know whether there is any further problems. With the experience of a prolonged outage in extension 16 last year at hand, I have asked the Manager Water to pay special attention to this. Water tankers are being deployed to strategic areas. Should you need specific support in an area please provide the area name here so that the Facebook Administrators can inform the team.”
The pipe that burst contains fresh and clean water. The crack in the pipe could be seen through hundreds of these clean litres of water. The pipe burst in Churchill street on January 21.
On Monday, January 22 the WITBANK NEWS had a meeting with Van Vuuren as he tried to explain in what state eMalahleni is at the moment. His response was clear that ‘we are in big trouble’.
Van Vuuren referred to eMalahleni as a motor vehicle without a maintenance plan and that, “they can not have control over everything at once.”
“I feel if this town only gives me damage. I have to pay for my gate motor that flooded; I have to pay for my water tank pump that broke in the process. I have to pay tax so that incidents like this one in Churchill Street does not occur but what do I get out of this? Nothing!” Gouws concluded.
