Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Infrastructure and Engineering Portfolio Head Councillor Mongameli Bobani has called on residents to use water sparingly as Day Zero has hit the City.
This comes after a number of residents and businesses experienced water outages this week due to the high water demand which can not be matched as the City is still faced with a drought disaster.
Addressing Members of the Media and residents on Friday, 04 September 2020, Member of the Mayoral Committee Councillor Bobani said: “We are experiencing water outages specially in the Western suburbs, Northen Areas and Uitenhage. As the City we can tell you that we are on Day Zero because we are using more water that we actually have in our dams. Currently our consumption of water is 290 million litres per day while we are supposed to use 268 million litres a day or less.”
“We would like to apologise to the residents for the inconvenience caused but this crisis is beyond our control. The rain is not falling enough making our dams drier each day. The current total dam levels are at 18.8% and following the recent rain we have only seen about 1.5% with the more than 100 mm rain that has fallen in the catchment areas over the last two weeks.”
Over the weekend of the 26-27 August 2020, the Northern Areas experienced water outages and a concerted effort was made to re-establish water to the areas. However, the action was compounded by some pipe and mechanical or electrical complications and insufficient water was pumped from Nooitgedagt which resulted in the problem.
MMC Bobani urged residents to use the remaining water sparingly and pray for rainfall as the situation was dire.
As part of the long term solutions MMC Bobani said the City had fixed 15700 water leaks saving the City millions of litres
“We have a number of projects currently underway to mitigate our water supply and this includes the Coegakop Water Treatment Work.”
He said water supply would be restored to residents affected by water outages in Northern Areas and Western suburbs on Friday evening.
Residents are urged to report water leaks on 0800 20 5050 or at waterleaks@mandelametro.gov.za and all water users are requested to use water sparingly and limit usage to 50 litres per day per person or less.
NMBM Senior Director: Water and Sanitation Barry Martin said: “Residents should not stockpile water as this puts an additional strain on the water supply system.”
NMB Communications
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