The water situation in eMalahleni still has not improved.
Ms Annemarie van Dyk shared videos with WITBANK NEWS that shows brown mud coming out of the taps in her kitchen.
“This is no joke anymore. We have a very serious problem Houston,” she managed to squeeze out a bit of humour after struggling without water for days on end and when that very welcoming sound of taps rattling as water comes through, she gets mud instead of crisp clean water.
Ms Marthina de Beer compares their water to ginger beer.
Other residents are complaining about dirty laundry, dirty toilets and the fact that it is costing them a lot of money to buy water, a commodity they are already paying for in their service accounts.
Usually, discoloured water will clear on its own within a few hours.
The most common reason for residential brown water coming out homeowner’s tap is from damaged or recently replaced water pipes.
Brown water happens because rust becomes dislodged from the water pipes and finds its way into your home water supply.
But this is not the situation in eMalahleni.
Brown water had been gushing out of taps for more than three weeks now.
On December 22 the municipality explained that the water discoloration in December was due to the continuous increase of manganese concentration.
They said the reason for the failures were because of power failures and defects on critical plant components.
However WITBANK NEWS has it on good authority that a shortage of Calcium Hydroxide is the problem.
Two weeks ago the Calcium Hydroxide was not delivered on time by the service provider supplying the municipality with chemicals.
According to the source the chemicals was later delivered. Yet the quality of the water has not improved yet.
Emalahleni Local Municipality has still to come forward with an explanation about the water situation after WITBANK NEWS asked them for feedback two weeks ago.
