Cape Town - The City of Cape Town cannot blame all its water woes on load shedding, activists say, as the municipality cited prolonged, high stages of blackouts as having an impact on water supply operations particularly in higher-lying areas where water needed to be pumped to get to properties.
This after a number of popular beaches were closed over the holiday season due to failed pump stations and unsafe levels of sewage.
As a precautionary measure, the City has appealed to residents to reduce collective water use to 850 million litres a day.
High-lying or mountainous areas which rely on Water Pumping Stations are at more immediate risk of low or no water pressure during high stages of load-shedding, the City said.
Affected areas include Somerset West, De Novo and Kraaifontein, Belmont Park, Eikendal and Scottsville, Deep South, from Simon’s Town to Murdoch Valley, and Hout Bay.
“The challenge is that reservoirs are not able to fill up fast enough because of the prolonged periods of load-shedding while residents are also using lots of water at the same time.
“Using less water will help deal with operational challenges, notably due to heavy load shedding, which are impacting on our water treatment plants and ability to convey good quality drinking water to reservoirs and areas across Cape Town, especially to high-lying areas,” said acting Mayco member for water and sanitation Siseko Mbandezi.
The City said tap water is still safe to drink, and dams are more than 65% full.
Currently, no beaches were closed.
The City said it had more than 400 sewer pump stations that need electricity to operate to service communities. The majority of the sewer system works on gravity, but when the sewage cannot be conveyed any further it needs to be pumped via pump stations.
The City said with high, prolonged stages of load shedding, there could be sewer spills and overflows and that “an added challenge is the dumping of inappropriate material in the sewer system, which leads to blockages”.
GOOD Party MP Brett Herron said the DA-led City, which markets itself as pristine and well-managed in comparison with ANC-led cities, was “battling” to explain having to close a number of popular beaches.
“The City would like residents to believe that increasingly regular electricity failures are to blame, and there is no doubt that high levels of load shedding won’t help.
But this excuse doesn’t explain away Milnerton Lagoon’s long-term contamination ... or that many Cape Flats communities have been living with seeping sewage for a number of years.
It is rather the disparity in infrastructure and the under-investment in these communities that have left them living in these unacceptable conditions.
“In the short-term, those pump stations that exist must be maintained and supplied with power to continue running during the intermittent blackouts. In the medium-term, shelved plans to develop more infrastructure, including new treatment works, must be resuscitated,” added Herron.
Stop CoCT founder Sandra Dickson said the City’s ageing infrastructure was “vulnerable and due to failure at times”.
“The unabated expansion of developments is putting more pressure on sewage, water and other municipal services. The poor decisions by the City and its strategy to reduce load shedding for the private sector and neglecting to safeguard its own services are now taking their toll.”
“Eskom’s failure had been evident for two decades now. The City had ample warning to ready itself. Yet, the City is now failing to deliver the mandatory services it was compelled to deliver. This is especially visible in its lack of reliable sewage management,” Dickson said.
The City meanwhile also said it is investing into its infrastructure through longer-term major capital projects such as bulk sewer and wastewater treatment works (WwTW) upgrades, while implementing an annual pipe replacement programme and repairing and upgrading sewer pump stations.
Cape Times