The time to act is now

AW Zulu writes:-

THE Vryheid Herald has many times said that the wall at Klipfontein Dam must be raised, but it stays the same as it was when the dam was finished more than 30 years ago.

The Vryheid Herald has many times said that the population of Vryheid has increased over this time, and anyone can see that the number of houses has increased maybe as much five times, maybe more. There’s Vryheid’s expansion, Bhekuzulu is now a huge township compared to what it was 30 years ago, Lakeside didn’t even exist when Klipfontein was built, then there is Bhekuzulu with more than 1,000 houses, and the Sasko area is to have over 2,500 houses when finished.

At the same time, Bloemveld and the other old dam have got smaller because of the silt building up year after year, so we have all these new homes demanding water from dams which are in fact holding less water than they were 30 years ago.

We need to raise the level of the wall at Klipfontein now. It is the only was that we can avoid a disaster when we have two bad seasons of not normal rainfall. Even this season 2014/2015 the dams are not yet full. I have seen Klipfontein and the water is more than a metre below the mark on the towers. It should be full at this time of year.

What will the municipality do if the dams dry up? It has not got the capacity to fill the Jojo tanks at the informal settlements and make sure that Vryheid, Bhekuzulu, Lakeside, 6B and Sasko get water delivered to them also.

Next year might already be too late if the dams are not full before winter. Two years of bad rains and we will have a big problem.