Dannhauser residents hit by water outages, greed and ongoing sewer leaks
Dannhauser residents are holding onto the hope that an R178-million water project will benefit over 10,000 residents. The Durnacol reservoir is to be upgraded and a new pipeline installed to bolster distribution in the town and surrounding rural areas, where residents say they are forced to collect water from streams.
A three-week outage again left Dannhauser residents scrambling for water, with even their community borehole running dry.
It is not clear what led to the taps running dry, but residents who spoke to the Courier referred to ‘a pay dispute between Amajuba District Municipality (the entity that provides water to the town) and workers at the water plant in Durnacol’.
However, this could not be confirmed, as district municipality has not responded to requests for comment.
The community borehole at Southpark (that was installed earlier this year) ran dry after one person arrived to fill his personal JoJo tanks with a capacity of 10,000 litres.
“We have two 10,000-litre JoJo tanks at the site, as the borehole was running strongly,” explained Farzanah Dookie of the Helping Hands organisation that drove the initiative.
“There has been a huge demand at the borehole for water since the outage, but there was simply no way it could cope with one individual tapping out 10,000 litres in one go; this is extremely selfish.”
She said the borehole did run dry and the gate was locked to allow the underground to gain momentum. “It does ebb and flow, so we have to manage the supply to ensure that every household can get at least 50 litres.”
However, that did not prevent one person from cutting the razor wire around the borehole site in an attempt to take water from the JoJo tanks.
“It’s crazy! We know people are desperate, but to go to such lengths and damage a facility that is there to serve everyone is not right,” Dookie said.
She added that, in future, a sign will be erected to ensure that those collecting water from the borehole do not exceed a limit which still has to be determined.
Sewage leaks
Sewage leaks are another problem impacting on the quality of life of Dannhauser residents.
An ongoing leak in Lotus Drive has caused much unpleasantness for residents and a nearby crèche.
Workers did come and look at a manhole on a property but said a TLB was required to dig a trench to access the broken pipeline.
However, the municipality did not have a TLB and while an offer was made to use a privately-owned TLB, the leak is still flowing in the residential area.
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