THE Nelson Mandela Bay Metro is dependent on more than 60% of the Kouga Dam’s water, a source which might run dry in mid- to late November this year.
This bleak picture of the metro’s current water crisis, due to the ongoing drought, was painted in a virtual press briefing held by the DA recently.
DA MPL, Retief Odendaal, said that the most important thing to do right now is to buy the metro some time in order to avoid Day Zero, which might come as early as the end of June for the Kouga Municipality, that is also reliant on the Kouga Dam.
According to Odendaal, the metro is currently not using the full capacity of the Nooitgedacht Water Scheme, which means that the dams are being overused.
The metro should be able to use more than 160 megalitres per day from the scheme, but only 155 megalitres were used in March and 137 megalitres in December last year.
Odendaal believes that the repairs which still need to be done at the Nooitgedacht Water Scheme are a major problem, since the scheme is supposed to move to Plan B if the dams run dry. “The metro is currently still using 327 megalitres a day, but it should be closer to 250 megalitres a day. An aggressive awareness campaign needs to be launched and we must use our full capacity – 210 megalitres a day after repairs – at the Nooitgedacht Water Scheme in order to buy some time.
“We are praying for rain, but the way things look right now, we are not going to make it. We must reduce our water usage,” Odendaal pleaded.
As part of the plan to buy the metro some time, DA leader in the Eastern Cape and PR councillor in the Bay, Nqaba Bhanga, said that they would be writing to the Department of Water and Sanitation to stop the metro from extracting water from the Kouga Dam. “We are going to demand a maximum extraction from the Nooitgedacht Water Scheme and for a reduction in the use of water,” Bhanga said.
The party’s spokesperson for infrastructure and engineering in the metro, Masixole Zinto, said that the 7 000 leaks previously reported across the metro, have not yet been fixed.
The appointment of seven contractors to repair the leaks, as proposed by the metro’s water and sanitation director, Barry Martin, during a council meeting in February, never took place, Zinto said.
“Everyone has been acting as if everything is normal, but our dams our running dry. The channel, which collapsed at the Nooitgedacht Water Scheme in 2018, has still not been repaired. We should be augmenting from there to supply water to the western areas, but the problem is still there,” he added.
As part of the DA’s plan to avert this crisis, the party launched a website aimed specifically at informing the community about the looming Day Zero. Residents can go to www.da.org.za/defeat-day-zero-in-nmb to find all Day Zero related information in the metro.
MMC for Infrastructure and Engineering in Nelson Mandela Bay, Andile Lungisa, said that there would be no Day Zero, as the metro would have its desalination plant at Coega up and ready by November this year. When asked if this would not take years to complete, Lungisa said that if R200 million had to be spent today, the metro could have a desalination plant by tomorrow. “We applied for the National Coega grant and we have received it. It would take a matter of months,” he said.
According to Lungisa, he had also been working to fix the leaks since the number of leaks in the metro decreased from 11 000 to 7 000. “It is only under my leadership that water leaks have been fixed like this.
“I have outperformed other MECs when it comes to this. There are currently seven companies on different sites and they have already fixed so many leaks,” Lungisa said. “They have been in Motherwell, Walmer Township and New Brighton, among others. We are not playing politics here. The leaks are being fixed,” he added.
“Regarding the Nooitgedacht Water Scheme, work is currently being done to fix the channel. When repairs to the channel are completed, the supply will increase from the current 170-180 megalitres a day to 210 megalitres a day.”
