Residents face new water cuts
Municipality drafts new restriction notice
Nelson Mandela Bay residents should brace themselves for further water restrictions as the municipality drafts a new restriction notice, with dam levels having dropped to an all-time low of 20%.
While the municipality has not yet spelt out the details of the proposed new restrictions, water and sanitation director Barry Martin said yesterday the water tariffs would not be affected.
The current restrictions and tariffs were introduced by mayor Athol Trollip last month after overall dam levels dipped below 30%, placing the metro in a water-emergency situation.
With dam levels threatening to drop below 20% this month, moving the metro into a “water-disaster situation”, and no significant rainfall predicted any time soon, municipal spokesman Mthubanzi Mniki said the municipality was being forced to introduce new restrictions.
At his initial media briefing as the new mayor in August 2016, Trollip advised residents that water restrictions would be implemented within the next week.
At the time, the overall dam level average was 72%.
Individual figures for the five supply dams were: Kouga 66.93%, Churchill 61.86%, Impofu 83.72%, Loerie 29.15% and Groendal 78.78%. The dams’ overall average is now at 20.33%, with Kouga at 7.61%, Churchill 17.11%, Impofu 32.15%, Groendal 42.7%, and Loerie – the smallest of the five – at 87.57%.
Mniki said the restrictions and tariffs had resulted in daily water usage dropping from as high as 340 megalitres a day little more than a year ago to an average of 265ML a day last month.
However, the Bay is yet to reach its elusive target of 250ML a day set in January last year.
Martin said while there was no set date for the implementation of the new restrictions, the urgency of the water situation required the draft to be passed as soon as possible.
“While we [were] declared a disaster zone a while ago, these new restrictions are to ensure that all our mechanisms are in place to deal with the drought disaster as best we can,” he said.
“Within the next week or two, the draft should be passed once I have completed all the paperwork.
“Thereafter, we will have a press briefing to relay the changes and updates of the new restrictions.
“I can confirm that the new water restrictions will not affect the current tariff structure as possible – and we are still a long way from getting the system to where it should be.”He said he considered the IPTS along the Cleary Park route a pilot project at this stage and if it turned out to be a failure, they would have to go back to the drawing board.
“For the foreseeable future, we are still going to be heavily subsidising the IPTS – and, fortunately, we get grant funding for it,” Odendaal said.
“But it doesn’t mean we will implement a system that continuously runs at major losses.
“If we see the passenger numbers are not picking up, we need to see if the routes are speaking to what we want.
“The system needs to add value to the communities, and if it doesn’t do that, what’s the point?”
He said that while the national government was funding the system now, there would probably come a time when the municipality would have to fund the bulk of the operational costs.
“Hopefully, by that time, the ticket sales will be better and will not necessitate us covering such a big portion of the costs.
“We want to get to a situation where we get value for money for the system.”
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