A post on the Hoedspruit Town Facebook page by two residents last week amid ongoing water shortages asked “town authorities to explain how they propose to address Hoedspruit’s current water crisis. The residents understand that much of the problem lies with [the lack of] power supply to water pumps which is beyond municipal control. “However, I think it is fair to say that the residents of the town would like to know, among other things, the following:
“What are the short, medium, and long-term contingency plans to supply water to the town? How will major buildings and road projects (which consume huge amounts of water) be supplied water for their operations? And how will this impact the supply of drinking water to residents? We are all in this boat together and I would like to urge open, constructive dialogue in an attempt to find workable solutions to the problem,” it was stated in the post.
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It seems that the major problem remains with the reservoir supplying Hoedspruit town situated in the Air Force Base. “The pipes at the reservoir are 135 cm wide, so it gushed out a large amount of water and caused the water levels to decrease. We experience challenges with pumping water for the Hoedspruit community when the water level is low,” Col Enrico Gherbavaz, acting commanding officer of the Air Force Base in Hoedspruit told the Herald a month ago when the Herald approached him for comment.
“On October 13, the level was at 0% hence the water supply was closed, and on October 21, the level was at 5%. Unfortunately, we were forced to implement a water-shedding schedule to ensure everyone would get water without a permanent loss of supply and damages to pumps,” he said at the time. He also said that the situation was further affected by the throttling of the water supply at certain times from the Blyde Dam water management.
“We are not sure how long the repair work that was carried out, will last. A permanent solution for the pipes is needed,” he said. Gherbavaz told the Herald on Tuesday that nothing has changed since the last report. The water authority for the region, Mopani District Municipality’s spokesperson Odas Ngobeni, told the Herald on Tuesday that they were not aware of any challenges in Hoedspruit, but have now alerted the technical team to look into the matter.
