Dry taps on Christmas Day not a joke
It was not just stabilizing reservoir levels and isolating certain areas to do so that added to the frustrations consumers experienced.
December was a horrible month with all the dry taps experienced in the municipality.
On Christmas Day Model Park extensions, Die Heuwel extensions, Highveld Park extensions, Blancheville extensions, Jackaroo Park, Clearwater Estate, Riverview and Seekoewater had no water because the areas were isolated in order to improve the reservoir levels.
It was not just stabilizing reservoir levels and isolating certain areas to do so that added to the frustrations consumers experienced.
Pipe breaks were happening every day in all areas of the municipality, the recent floods and the sudden load shedding added the last drop in the already angry filled buckets.
Some water supply shortages were due to the deteriorated raw water quality as a result of the recent floods. The council has seen high raw water inflows into the Witbank Dam which warranted flood management systems to be activated.
“The Witbank Water Treatment Plant was unable to handle the quality of raw water which affected the operating efficiencies of the plant and the frequency of backwashing was at a high rate.
This resulted in the potable water production reduction to approximately 60% of the normal plant output.
The package plant is operating at about 33% capacity due to the deteriorated quality therefore also reducing the system input volume,” the municipality said in a statement.
The council laboratory services team together with external service providers was monitoring the raw water quality by doing quality monitoring and effecting necessary adjustments on the plant operations to improve productivity.
Eskom’s load shedding played its fair share.
The provision of water supply and handling of sewerage is made possible by electro-mechanical machinery and equipment driven by electricity supply. This process entails abstraction from the dam, pumping, water purification, strategic storage, sewerage handling, sewerage treatment and disposal.
The infrastructure configuration of the municipality is such that the critical facilities such as water treatment plants, command water distribution reservoirs and sewer treatment plants are integrated and not supplied with electricity separately.
This arrangement makes it difficult to ensure that they always have power supply during load shedding; as a result water supply is interrupted.
The most affected are distant and high lying areas as they require electrical supply for pumping of water supply.
The air ingress in the pumping system resulted in water hammering that led to municipal workers and contractors running around fixing one pipe break after the other.
Because there are no pressure relieve valves in the water networks in eMalahleni consumers with abnormal high water consumption bills are reminded that they can approach the municipality where they will be assisted and their accounts rectified.
