Bay water situation remains dire

Though water supply has been restored to some Nelson Mandela Bay areas after a week-long outage last week the system is under severe pressure due to dwindling dam levels.

Municipal spokesperson Mthubanzi Mniki said areas still experiencing intermittent to no water supply are Humewood, City Hall and the Govan Mbeki Avenue area.

Technical teams are working on a number of interventions to restore supply.

Last week The Herald had reported that the critically low water level at the Impofu Dam had made it impossible for the city to extract water from it, leading to deficits in the city’s reservoirs.

Areas affected by the outage included Walmer Heights, Walmer, Charlo, Newton Park, Cotswold, Fairview, North End, Sydenham, Gelvandale, Algoa Park, New Brighton, Mill Park and parts of Zwide.

On Wednesday, Mniki said that number of interventions had been implemented, which included stricter monitoring of the work done by the water leaks team, the implementation of a robust awareness campaign, and prioritisation of major water leaks.

“This has led to a slight improvement in the situation.

“More interventions, such as fast-tracking procurement processes relating to improvements in the ageing water distribution infrastructure and the appointment of plumbing contractors, are currently under way."

According to Mniki, water supply to Walmer Heights, Walmer, Charlo, Newton Park, Mill Park, North End, Sydenham, Algoa Park, parts of Zwide and New Brighton had been restored.  

Despite this, Mniki cautioned that the system remained constrained and critical.

“The reticulation system still has a deficit, which has now shifted to other supply reservoirs,” he said.

“Consumers are urgently required to cut back consumption to stabilise the system,” he said.