WINTER has to be prepared for. In some parts of the world with bitter winters, it means ensuring adequate supplies of food, fodder, shelter and fuel. In the AbaQulusi area, as in the rest of northern KZN, winter coincides with the dry season, and the priority is water.
AbaQulusi enters winter 2015 in a relatively perilous position with regards to its water security. The rains failed last summer, and the dams that supply Vryheid, Bhekuzulu and Lakeside, and the sprawling low-cost housing schemes, are not 100% full as they should be.
If the rains fail again next summer, it will be disastrous.
But Vryheid is at the mercy of the rains every year, and the only way to mitigate the effect of failed rains is to increase the storage capacity of the major dam, Klipfontein. In fact, Klipfontein Dam, built in the early 1980s, was designed with this contingency in mind.
Raising the level of the spillway wall, and thus the capacity of the dam behind it, has always been an option.
As long ago as 2006, a study was done for this possibility. At the time, it would seem that the object of the study was less to do with the water security of Vryheid than it was to do with assessing the possibility of also supplying Mondlo/ Hlalindela with water from Klipfontien. The dam had been identified as a potential water source for the proposed Mondlo and Nkonjeni Regional Schemes (Nkonjeni is the area that surrounds Ulundi).
The conclusions reached in the 2006 assessment, and in some instances based on statistics from 2002, obviously would now have to be updated. But among the conclusions were the consequences of raising the wall of Klipfontein Dam.
It was stated that; * Raising the wall by just 0.62 metres would increase the dam’s capacity by 10%. * Raising the wall by 2.63 metres would increase the dam’s capacity by 34%. * Raising the wall by 4.62 metres would increase the dam’s capacity by 49%.
The first option would have few secondary cost implications.
The second option would flood the Vryheid/Ulundi road at two points, meaning that the road would have to be moved or raised. If raised it would then be somewhat like driving on the top of a levee.
The third option would have dam water backing up to cover the two sections on the Vryheid/Ulundi road, and the bridge on the bypass and the bridge on the old Babanango road. But the studies have been done.
Perhaps they were preliminary but the studies were done nearly a decade ago, and nothing has been done since to bolster the water security of AbaQulusi not the water users downstream of the Wit Umfolozi.
Apparently a Catchment Study of the Wit Umfolozi needed to be done by the Department of Water Affairs before the wall could be raised, and this study needed to be motivated by the Zululand District Municipality.
capacity of the dam and help avert water shortages in Vryheid,
Bhekuzulu and Lakeside.
If it ever was, is not known.
