Kimberley - While residents in Kimberley remained without water for most of the day on Thursday, Sol Plaatje Municipal Manager, Goolam Akharwaray, was confident that the situation was under control and the municipality’s strategy to build the reserves at Newton Reservoirs is bearing fruit.
At a press conference on Thursday morning, Akharwaray said the two bigger dams at the Newton Reservoir were standing at 6.8 feet and the smaller reservoirs at 6ft and 8ft respectively.
Despite the increased reserves, however, many residents, especially those in high-lying areas, continued to face dry taps.
In some areas, there was a trickle of water around 8am but this soon dried up again as the municipality continued to try and build reserves by interrupting supply.
Akharwaray announced on Thursday that no water would be supplied to the city until 5am this morning in an attempt to build the levels in the two smaller dams to above 10 feet.
“If this is achieved before 5am, a decision could be taken to switch on the water ahead of schedule, but this situation will be monitored and we will respond accordingly,” Akharwaray stated.
Meanwhile, direct supply off the main line from the Riverton Purification Works to the lower lying areas of the city, which was also cut overnight, was resumed on Thursday morning, meaning that some parts of the city did have water during the day on Thursday.
Akharwaray added that this would continue throughout the course of the day on Thursday until 7pm when the plan was to interrupt supply again to allow dedicated pumping to the reservoir.
“It is important to supply water to low-lying areas so that water can be available for emergency needs and as a manual alternative source to high-lying areas.”
Akharwaray stated that while the municipality would continue to assess the impact of its strategy to build the reserves, the indication on Thursday was that it appeared to be working.
He added that it was important to raise the levels at the storage dams at the Newton Reservoir to above 10ft in order to balance the inflow and the outflow and he reiterated that Riverton was pumping at full capacity.
“We did experience a problem at Riverton on Wednesday but this has been resolved and the only challenge currently is the pressure issue and ensuring that there is enough water in the storage dams to pump water to the high-lying areas of the city.”
Akharwaray pointed out that one of the complicating factors was the warm weather which had resulted in an increase in consumption.
“Before we started the work at the weekend on the two main lines from the Riverton Purification Works, all four dams were essentially full. A large amount of that water went into filling up the network once water was restored and the other complicating factor was the unexpected delay in the time it took to complete the work. If the work had been completed on Sunday morning, as expected, we would not have had this problem.”
He stated further that while the original intention was to undertake the work in winter, the necessary parts for the valve replacement did not arrive on time from overseas.
“We couldn’t delay the work until the coming winter because that would have impacted on the schedule of the contract.”
Meanwhile, attempts were made on Thursday to negate the effects of the dry taps by providing water to residents at the municipality’s offices, while residents with Jo-Jo Tanks could also fill these up at the Newton Reservoir.
Municipal spokesman, Sello Matsie, said that this decision was taken because there was water at the reservoir which could be used to provide limited water.
Earlier this week, there was almost no water in the dams at the reservoir.
DFA