Nearly a year after first raising the alarm, Nelson Mandela Bay officials still cannot guarantee the safety of the water delivered by outsourced tankers.
This comes as construction on the final phase of the Sundays River canal begins on Friday, resulting in low water pressure in some areas of the Bay and possible outages in others.
DA councillor Annette Lovemore said on Thursday she was worried about the safety of the water that may be carted to communities while work was being done on the canal because most of the city could be affected.
Addressing these concerns, acting water boss Joseph Tsatsire reiterated that the metro could not guarantee the quality and safety of the water from the tankers and encouraged people to boil it first.
He made the comments during a public health committee meeting at the Kariega Town Hall on Thursday.
Almost a year ago, Tsatsire issued a similar warning in June when the metro was about to conduct construction work at the Lower Sundays River Valley canal.
At the time, the communities relied on the city to cart water to them, and due to a shortage of available tankers owned by municipality additional ones had to be contracted.
On Thursday, Tsatsire repeated the concerns as work on the canal was expected to start on Friday, with communities such as Motherwell, Wells Estate, Bluewater Bay, parts of Chatty, Kariega, Despatch, Bloemendal and Bethelsdorp expected to experience low water pressure for nearly two weeks.
Addressing councillors at the meeting, Tsatsire said water trucks were primarily used as an emergency measure.
“For example, with the plant work that we’ll be doing in Nooitgedacht, we recently conducted lots of planning behind the scenes to ensure that we don’t cause water disruptions,” Tsatsire said.
“But in the event that something happens and unforeseen disruptions are experienced, we will obviously have to activate the water trucks.
“Most of the trucks we use are sourced from external service providers.
“The institution has its own trucks which we can monitor in terms of usage on a daily basis.
“However, from a technical specification point of view, all the service providers are supposed to sterilise their water trucks and ensure they are flushed with chlorine to kill harmful bacteria.”
But Tsatsire said officials did not have control over what happened with the trucks when they were not being used by the metro as they belonged to external service providers.
“Hence the monitoring regime becomes important so that at any given time we can give assurance that the water taken from our reticulation system to provide to communities has been tested.
“But as a precautionary measure in the absence of the testing regime, we issue a notice to say we cannot guarantee the quality and safety of the water and people are encouraged to boil it first because the handling value chain becomes too long.”
Tsatsire said officials would continue to have engagements with the public health directorate regarding the initiation of the required testing and monitoring.
The most recent work on the canal is essential because failure to repair it could jeopardise the entire water scheme, putting Addo, Paterson and Nelson Mandela Bay at risk.
The metro receives about 60% of its water supply from the scheme through the Nooitgedacht Water Treatment Works.
As a result of the shutdown, the Nooitgedacht scheme will supply only 70 megalitres a day, compared with the usual 250 megalitres.
The Lower Sundays River Valley Canal is part of the Orange-Fish-Sundays Inter-Basin Transfer Scheme, built in the 1970s.
The scheme transfers water from the Gariep Dam on the Eastern Cape-Free State border into the province through the 80km Orange-Fish Tunnel.
Thereafter, the flow is controlled and conveyed through a 450km-long system of dams, canals, tunnels and rivers, supplying irrigation to 50,000ha of farmland and domestic water to Nxuba (Cradock), KwaNojoli (Somerset East), Bedford, Adelaide, Kirkwood, Addo and Paterson.
The construction of the canal is being done after a section collapsed in May 2017.
Tsatsire issued his latest warning when a report on the microbiological and chemical status of drinking water in the city was tabled by acting executive director for public health Anna-Lisa Dyakala.
According to the report, findings on the chronic health determinants showed compliance for acute health microbiological determinants.
But DA councillor Mthokozisi Nkosi said he had observed that there were a number of determinants such as aluminium and manganese that were not being tested and he wanted to know why.
“This is not new. There are metals that haven’t been tested in the water for quite some time and each time we’ve raised this issue we were told it’s going to be attended to and nothing ever comes back to us.”
ANC councillor Lorna Makwetu agreed with Nkosi regarding the lack of feedback on issues councillors raised in the committee.
“It’s been a while talking about the testing of tank water and I hope it will be done continuously and not just for this period because the people of Kariega and Motherwell depend on tankered water, even if it comes from hired trucks.
“We need the water to be safe.”
Lovemore said: “What is of concern and needs to be raised again is the issue of tankered water.
“We’ve been told before that tankered water is not being sampled.
“At the moment we have repairs taking place at the Sundays River canal and we are likely to use tankered water throughout the city because 70% of the city is potentially going to be affected and we might rely on the water trucks.
“Mr Tsatsire has told us to consider the tank water unsafe to drink though there’s no sign that states this.”
Public health political head Thsonono Buyeye said he wanted feedback on the testing of tankered water and the full testing of determinants in the drinking water because it was a long-standing issue.
“This issue has been long coming,” Buyeye said.
“I remember at some point there were monies put aside for the testing of the determinants and tank water at least twice a year so that an updated report can be brought to the committee as soon as possible.”
The Herald
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