Water outages of up to a week expected in parts of Nelson Mandela Bay

Residents in Nelson Mandela Bay may experience water outages of up to a week at a time as the city blocked supply to some reservoirs in order to redirect water to areas that have not had water for days.

In a statement on Sunday morning, mayor Retief Odendaal said the recent power outages coupled to the fact that residents had not reduced consumption exacerbated the crisis.

“Over the last four days we have seen three major electricity outages that has affected our ability to transfer water into the city. The latest one being a substation that has exploded in the Coega IDZ last night.

“This has seriously affected our ability to stabilise the system amidst our constraints in supply, which simply can’t meet demand,” Odendaal said.

"We have therefore started to block water supply to some reservoirs in a bid to redirect water to zones that have been without water for days. This will mean that different areas will start experiencing water outages which may last for up to a week.

“We have to say that we are really disappointed that consumer behaviour is non-responsive to this crisis. Whilst there are so many people that are doing their utmost in conserving our precious water resources, there are also those that remain irresponsible by refusing to change their water consumption lifestyle.”

He reiterated that the use of a garden hose connected to a municipal supply – including filling storage tanks – was prohibited.

Filling of swimming pools with municipal supply and using water for construction purposes was also prohibited, he said.

“Fines of up to R5000.00 will be issued to anyone found to have contravened our restriction notices.”

On Saturday night, a fire in the Coega Industrial Development Zone damaged an electricity substation.

This, in turn, tripped the Aloes substation, leaving large parts of the city – including Motherwell and Bluewater Bay – without power.

The outage impacted the Motherwell pump station, which meant that water from the Nooitgedacht line could not be pumped into the city.

“This is a very serious outage and has a severe impact on Coega IDZ,” Odendaal said in a statement.

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