New water reservoir on the cards for Brakpan
Last year’s water glitches, which resulted in an almost month-long supply interruption in parts of Gauteng, have posed a challenge to all municipalities to better prepare themselves for such incidents.
Rand Water is the contracted service provider for the entire Ekurhuleni area and has supplied water to the province without fail since 1906.
No one could have anticipated a challenge such as the one experienced during 2014.
In this regard, the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality is working on a future Water Management Plan to cater for such events.
One component in the plan is the exploration of an early warning system, which would be used to indicate dropping water levels in the metro’s storage reservoirs and allowing for speedy intervention.
This will be achieved through a telemetric type system that will synchronize all reservoirs in Ekurhuleni, making it easy to divert water from one supply zone to another.
This process will also include the integration of the metro’s underground infrastructure, so that municipal water supply zones are aligned to enable the distribution of water from one supply zone to another, where practically possible.
Ekurhuleni is currently working on constructing two additional water reservoirs, in Palm Ridge and Etwatwa Extension 19, which are expected to be completed in the 2016/2017 financial year.
The municipality will also pull out all the stops to ensure that more portable storage water reservoirs are built by the year 2021, in anticipation of future supply risk and population growth, due to urbanization.
Additional reservoirs to be built are:
- 20Ml reservoir in Brakpan, estimated at R25-million
- 11Ml reservoir in Masetchaba View, estimated at R18-m
- 26Ml reservoir in Russel Road, estimated at R34-m
- 10Ml reservoir in Etwatwa, estimated at R20-m.
- 1.1Ml water tower in Etwatwa, estimated at R10-m
- 5Ml water tower in Northmead, estimated at R32-m
- 13Ml reservoir in Dunottar, estimated at R23-m
- 1Ml water tower in Visagie Park, estimated at R10-m
- 25Ml reservoirs in Bredell, estimated at R31-m
Furthermore, the construction of the two storage reservoirs, which will add additional water storage capacity soon, is already in an advanced stage of planning.
ALSO READ: RAPID RESPONSE UNIT TO TACKLE WATER LEAKS IN EKURHULENI
