Durban -
Hopes for a rainy December to revive shrinking water stocks have been reduced to a trickle as dam levels drop to record lows.
The situation has not improved from two weeks ago when Umgeni Water issued a warning of impending water restrictions.
The water utility described the situation yesterday as a “crisis”.
“Hazelmere Dam levels are sitting at 38 percent. There has been no improvement at all as a result of the drought the areas to the north of Durban are experiencing,” its spokesman, Shami Harichunder, told the Daily News.
The dam supplies Waterloo, Verulam, La Mercy, Westbrook, oThongathi (Tongaat), Sea-tides, Groutville, Ndwedwe, Ballito and Umhlali.
Earlier this month the entity had made recommendations to the eThekwini Municipality, iLembe District Municipality and Sembcorp Siza Water (which supplies water to the Dolphin Coast area) to try to reduce water usage by 30 percent, Harichunder said.
He explained that the rain had not been sufficient to make up for the shortfall.
“There hasn’t been much rain in the catchment areas of Greytown, Kranskop and Wartburg. It needs to rain in these areas so that the water can feed into the Umdloti River. This is serious; we are in the midst of a crisis.”
He said the Hazelmere Waterworks typically treated 48 million litres of water a day.
The level of Hazelmere Dam, which was close to 100 percent about a year ago, had dropped to 40 percent by December 12.
“This means that the volume of available raw water at the Hazelmere Dam for treatment purposes at Hazelmere Waterworks will be insufficient to meet water demands, should the dam levels not improve to acceptable levels soon. The level of Hazelmere Dam is reducing on average by 1 percent every seven days.”
Harichunder said this was a result of a combination of factors, including reduced inflow due to lower than normal rainfall in the catchment, high temperatures, increased evaporation and increased demand.
“The actual Hazelmere Dam rainfall totals received for October and November 2014 are 46mm and 67mm respectively. The corresponding monthly past long-term averages for October and November is 101mm and 100mm respectively.”
Level one restrictions have been in place since October when stakeholders had met in an emergency session.
“The intended result was a curtailment in demand of 10 percent collectively across all three water services authorities. However, this was not achieved and a decision was subsequently taken to apply level two restrictions to produce a saving of 20 percent,” Harichunder said.
“Due to the continued decline in the storage at Hazelmere Dam, the drought planning committee agreed to impose level three restrictions with a view to achieving 30 percent reduction in demand.”
However, at a drought planning committee meeting held on December 9, he said Umgeni Water had pointed out that in the month of its implementation, level three saving of 30 percent had still not been achieved.
Further water restrictions in the form of “time of use” limits were then applied.
“What this new measure means is that load shedding(-like) will occur on a certain number of days in a week and for a certain number of hours, like (electricity) load shedding. In this time water supply to domestic and business users will be entirely disconnected.”
As a strategy, he said, it was intended to stabilise the level of the dam to prevent it from falling to below 35 percent which, if it occurred, would precipitate a bigger crisis.
He said that if water usage continued exactly as it was without curtailment and if there was no rain, water supplies at the dam would run out by the first week of April.
SA Weather Service forecaster, Aslam Sardiwalla, said the week ahead in terms of rainfall did not look promising.
“There is a 30 percent chance of rain over the whole province from (today) until Thursday but nothing substantial enough to make an impact. There’s no real weather system expected to bring heavy rain.”
He said the following week showed no signs of heavy rain either.
“This forecast could change. But, for now, there are only isolated showers predicted.”
When contacted for comment, Sembcorp’s Siza Water spokeswoman, Khosi Mathenjwa, said she had been on leave for two weeks and would be unable to say if there was any update.
- Daily News