Residents faced serious water shortages as several areas of town experienced catastrophic pipe failures last week.
To make matters worse, municipal workers downed tools while in the midst of repairing the Ring Avenue pipe infrastructure, forcing the municipality to employ an independent contractor’s services.
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The municipality had to dispatch water tankers to some of the affected areas.
Residents, armed with buckets and with very little humour, gathered at the respective water points to collect their water ration.
Areas most affected were Schuinshoogte, parts of Aviary Hill, Paradise and Hutten Heights.
In some areas, the water supply was cut off for days at a time while attempts were made to repair the failing and fragile water infrastructure.
Ring Avenue resident, Dr Nkashama, who was interviewed at the water collection point on Tuesday last week, explained,
“Our water has been off since about six this morning. We’re filling buckets because we aren’t sure when the water supply will be reinstated.”
Democratic Alliance Councillor Bertie Meiring, was at one of the repair sites until late in the evening, after liaising with senior staff in the Technical Services Department.
“The workers opened the ground around the pipe and then went on strike, without notifying anyone,” he said in frustration. The contractor managed to repair the burst pipe on both Ring Avenue and at the intersection of Waterbuck and Hillside Avenue so water services were restored late on Tuesday night.
Two days later, another catastrophic pipe failure in Erica Drive and Begonia Avenue, only recently repaired, gave out yet again leaving residents once again without running water. Supply was only restored late on Thursday evening.
The Drakensberg Drive network seems to be the most troublesome, with five pipe failures reported in just one week beginning with the rupturing of a 300 millimetre pipe rupturing.
From then, residents have had to endure intermittent water supply.
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Paradise was also affected when water pressure dropped dramatically last Friday morning as the result of a burst pipe in Kirkland Street, with water pressure only normalising on Saturday.
Supply has been slowed multiple times since then.
Many residents believe that the water supply problems they have experienced are just a precursor for a much larger disaster – the complete collapse of the town’s water reticulation system.
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