Empangeni water shutdown taking a toll on businesses, residents

As Empangeni residents feel the pinch amid a 48-hour water shutdown, so are local industries whose operations have been impacted.

These industries include Tronox whose furnaces at the Empangeni processing plant face major risk owing to the outage.

ALSO READ: 48-hour water shutdown planned for Empangeni

The 48-hour shutdown began on Tuesday morning, with water supply expected to be restored tomorrow (Thursday) at 10am.

According to Tronox, the two 32 megawatt furnaces face huge risk of irrecoverable damage if the cooling system is not restored in the next few hours.

The City of uMhlathuze said it is working to mitigate water supply to residents who have been affected by the outage.

“Reservoir levels on the municipality’s side are decreasing, necessitating water restrictions to preserve water for the community,” said the city’s communications manager, Bongani Gina.

Eight water tankers have reportedly been deployed to Empangeni and neighbouring areas, primarily targeting schools and health facilities.

“Additional tanker services will be extended to the broader community in the afternoon.

“Four static water tanks (JoJo tanks) have been installed at strategic locations, including Vuvuzela, DMV crèche, DMV Wood and Raw, and Nico’s Supermarket. An additional six JoJo tanks will be deployed by the end of the day.”

Meanwhile, owing to low reservoir levels and the planned maintenance shutdown at the Nsezi Water Treatment Plant, water pressure in Richards Bay could be affected.

“uMhlathuze Municipality is currently supplying water from the Mzingazi Water Treatment Plant only, which may not meet the full demand for the region,” said Gina.

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