Received the following suggestion via mail today; “Should the R260 million in water consumption penalties collected by the council not be used to complete the pipe line system.”
Whilst agreeing with the sentiment I also have some concerns with the figures reported in yesterday’s council by Acting Municipal Manager, Elias Ntoba who reported that average water sales during normal consumption was R28 million and R41 million during the water restrictions.
If the daily water consumption figures as reported by Barry Martin’s water department are correct then the Metro is losing a HUGE amount of water through leakage / Assistance to the Poor (ATTP) / shrinkage and write offs.
See: I am Gonna Give You 16 Million Reasons Why The Water Restrictions Weren’t Lifted for more clarity on the workings below.
The reason why I say so is simple:
- If you take the ‘normal consumption period’ from January 2009 to March 2010 the average water consumption per day was 270.6 megalitres.
- Times 270.6 megalitres * 1000 * 30.44 * 6.60 (Average – to kilolitres * no of days in a month * Domestic Tariff ONLY) then you get a figure of R 54 362 622.40 of sales per month.
- NOW – the above figure is extremely conservative as it only takes the lowest domestic rate into consideration and does not factor in commercial, industrial rates nor consumption above 0.8 kilolitres per day.
Maybe Elias Ntoba and Barry Martin should try and match their figures up?
Alan Straton
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Free water allocations to the indigent, water leaks and internal consumption?
Eish, you baasted agent, don’t touch me on my tap!! 😉
An e-mailed comment: It is documented that we currently lose about 30% of our water monthly.
From filtration to meter. I have no idea what they lose from dam to filtration.Your argument is even better if you include a % of industry into the figures.So once again they are bullshitting us.
If we take 30% off of our already conservative sales figures then we get R38 053 835.68 – still R10 million above the reported figure and STILL NOT taking into account commercial and industrial water consumption – i.e. Our sales estimates are still at the lowest price of R6.60 per kilolitre and NOT at any higher figure for consumption over 0.8 kilolitres per day.
I have heard ESTIMATES that the total loss of water from dam to mater is 50%.
Doesn’t it make you mad that we have to suffer whilst the Municipality ‘fritters’ our water away, then ‘punishes’ us with punitive water tariffs and restrictions when they are the ones who are the biggest wasters of water?
Question: What is the international norm for loss of water from Dam to Meter?