Trollip announces harsher water restrictions for Bay

The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has announced stricter water restrictions, effective immediately.

This comes as the level of dams supplying the Bay dropped to a dire 19.27% this week.

Announcing the metro’s plans at City Hall press briefing on Wednesday morning, mayor Athol Trollip said measures had to be introduced immediately to prevent dam levels dropping even further.

Some of the new measures announced are:

- Households are restricted to consumption of 15kl per house;

- High water consumers will have discs and flow restrictors installed across the board;

- No use of hosepipes are allowed at all unless it is water from another source and for firefighting purposes;

- No use of municipal water supply allowed to water gardens, wash cars, hose down walls or paving, top up pools, fountains or ponds;

- Car washes will be shut down by the city if they do not recycle at least 60% of the water;

- No applications for new pool installations will be approved;

- All building contractors must use treated effluent, collected from Fishwater Flats (or any other appropriate wastewater treatment works), other than for concrete work;

- No use of automatic urinal flushing systems allowed;

- No municipal showers will operate; and

- Municipal swimming pools must be filled with suitable ground water.

More on this story in The Herald tomorrow.