eThekwini announces year-long water curtailment
eThekwini had exceeded its water use license limits in the uMngeni-Uthukela Water (UUW) catchment area.
eThekwini residents and some North Coast communities can expect “water curtailment” from Thursday that is likely to last at least a year.
The 12-month programme, announced by the eThekwini Metro last week in a bid to reduce water usage by 8.4%, will impact Westbrook, La Mercy, Umdloti, Tongaat and surrounding areas on the North Coast.
This follows Department of Water and Sanitation findings that eThekwini had exceeded its water use license limits in the uMngeni-Uthukela Water (UUW) catchment area, from which the majority of eThekwini’s bulk water is supplied.
Over the past 12 months, eThekwini has averaged water usage of 1 406.4 megalitres per day (Ml/d) – a full 118Ml/d higher than the licensing agreement allows.
Ageing infrastructure, illegal water connections and rapid urbanisation have been cited as the major reasons for the over-usage of water across the metro.
“The risk of not enforcing the abstraction limit is that, should a drought occur, there would not be sufficient water in the system for uMngeni-uThukela Water to continue providing the eThekwini municipality with a reliable water supply,” said eThekwini mayor, Cyril Xaba.
“However, if UUW implements the gradual reduction as planned, the water supply should remain stable, even with below-average rainfall. If there is below-average rainfall, any restrictions required would be more manageable.”
To meet the prescribed usage limits, eThekwini will implement a wide range of water-saving interventions, including cuts where necessary.
Interventions include:
- Installation of restrictors in all consumers’ water meters.
- Pressure reduction in the reticulation network.
- Metering all unmetered consumers.
- Improving turnaround times when repairing leaks and pipe bursts through deployment of ward-based plumbers.
- Community education on water conservation.
- Disconnection of illegal connections.
- Water rationing where demand is too high or exceeds supply.
The interventions will only affect residential consumers. Businesses, NGOs and state-owned entities will be excluded.
Mayor Xaba denied reports that the city was preparing a schedule for water cuts and said that they would only be implemented if other curtailment proved ineffective.
The North Coast communities are no strangers to water supply issues as they were among the hardest hit by sustained outages in the wake of the 2022 floods and recent Tongaat tornado.
- Note: The headline of this article was changed from ‘eThekwini announces year-long water cuts’ to ‘eThekwini announces year-long water curtailment’ in order to reflect that water rationing is the last scenario in the metro’s water curtailment programme.
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