Despite an improvement in bulk reservoir levels since emergency procedures had to be implemented last week, Swartland residents are still urged to use water sparingly. Swartland Municipality says although there are some improvements, load shedding is scheduled to continue throughout the week and residents will still have to save water wherever possible.
The municipality issued a statement last Wednesday afternoon in which it stated that if residents cannot conserve and reduce their water usage the municipality will be forced to introduce water rationing within the next 24 to 48 hours.
“This crisis is due to the prolonged period of phase 5 and phase 6 load shedding implemented by Eskom,” the Swartland Municipality statement said. “The pumps responsible for filling our bulk supply reservoirs simply do not have enough time between load shedding slots to keep up and refill. Even though the municipality has some emergency generators it is not enough to keep all the pumps required operational. Due to continuous load shedding, our bulk-water reservoirs across the entire Swartland Municipality have reached critical depletion levels.”
Thursday morning the municipality issued yet another statement saying they were now forced to implement emergency procedures since the water situation “remains dire” as it seemed that resident were not responding sufficiently to the municipality’s request to “drastically reduce” water consumption.
The municipality explained that water is pumped, using electricity from Voëlvlei Dam through water purification systems to the bulk-distribution reservoirs. These feed water to distribution reservoirs in various towns, and from there the water is supplied to homes and businesses in the Swartland.
Electricity, provided by Eskom, “is used at various stages to fill the reservoirs, and provide a continuous water supply,” the municipality statement reads. Reservoirs store water to ensure water supply to end-users is not interrupted in the event of a failure in bulk supply. More importantly, reservoirs provide a balance between the supply capacity of a bulk supply system and demand during periods of peak demand.
“Unfortunately, bulk supply capacity is severely impeded during high stages of loadshedding due to the loss in pumping hours. With the impeded bulk supply our reservoirs are not sufficiently replenished and cannot provide the balancing functioning anymore.
“If the situation continues for an extended period, reservoirs will run empty, resulting in a failure in the water supply. Once this has occurred it would take several days for the normal bulk supply to bring the system back in balance and for reservoirs to reach safe storage levels.”
