Water-shedding may soon be a reality in Nelson Mandela Bay.
Dams are projected to run dry by the end of May, leading to severe shortages if consumption does not decrease.
Residents are consuming an average of 280ML a day, which is more than the ideal 230ML needed to get the city through to the next rainy season.
This will leave the city dependent on the almost completed Nooitgedacht connection, which will only bring in 200ML a day to the network.
This was revealed by water and sanitation boss Barry Martin on Monday during a virtual meeting with MPLs in Bhisho.
The meeting was also attended by mayor Eugene Johnson and city manager Noxolo Nqwazi, who insisted that a reporter be removed from the meeting.
Nqwazi said: “[There is information] still not ready to share with the public.”
The reporter was then asked to leave the meeting
DA MPL Retief Odendaal said at this stage the municipality should have long been implementing water-shedding so that it could buy time for the completion of the other projects that would augment the city’s water supply.
“This means [with water-shedding] that only two-thirds of the city will have water on any given day.
“It is now on the cards but they have not shared that with the public because they are not even remotely close to rostering load-shedding,” Odendaal said.
He said it was also unacceptable that the municipality could not state which parts of the city would not get water should the only flow come from Nooitgedacht.
“We have got an integrated system now — I asked Martin twice which areas in Nelson Mandela Bay will not be connected.
“What is clear is that the city’s plans are not in place and we are heading for an absolute disaster.
“We are weeks away from the day we can no longer extract water from the dams in the eventuality that we do not get rain,” he said.
According to Odendaal, the plan presented to the MPLs included the possibility of businesses finding their own water supply.
“If we get the facts on the table and every stakeholder interrogates their plan, we will only have six weeks to deal with the anomalies and its shortcomings.
“One of the discussions was that the municipality will not be able to supply some businesses with water and they will have to make their own plans.
“Well, why were they not told that?
“Why wait until the end of May when they will not be able to make alternative plans?” Odendaal asked.
ANC MPL Tony Duba, who was chairing the meeting, said he was happy something was being done about the situation but was not happy with the lack of communication to the public.
“We suggested to them that the same strategy that was used during the vaccination drive should be the same the city uses now.
“It will be unpalatable for people not to have water for two or three days while not knowing what the situation is,” Duba said.
Both Duba and Odendaal said it was also not acceptable that The Herald reporter was requested to leave the meeting.
When contacted, Nqwazi said the metro was developing a plan which included risk analysis, benefits and risk mitigation plans.
“Once the process is finalised, it will be tabled to the mayor for consideration,” Nqwazi said.
Odendaal said they were also unhappy with the reasons provided for why contamination in the water supply had been kept secret.
“They say the reason they could not alert the public is that they did not know where the problem emanated [from]. No-one buys that.
“It can never happen that when a city discovers that the water quality has deteriorated substantially it just keeps quiet,” he said.
The combined dam levels were at 13.6% on Monday.
HeraldLIVE
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