With only days left of running water in Knysna taps, water and sanitation minister Pemmy Majodina visited the municipality at the weekend, ahead of the anticipated Day Zero.
Majodina met with residents at Khayalethu Community Hall and visited the Sedgefield and Karatara plant before going to the Akkerkloof dam, a vital water resource for the town.
She also engaged officials and the local business chamber in an effort to find solutions on how to turn around the looming crisis.
Knysna workers and officials have been working around the clock, fixing ageing infrastructure to prevent leaks that may expedite taps running dry.
A desalination pump has been out of commission for a decade.
Knysna is now under level four water restrictions, and on Friday, the council approved a recommendation for the town to be declared a disaster area.
Majodina shared strong words with officials, warning them to stop neglecting resources and monitor the infrastructure regularly.
Anything that is not operated properly and maintained properly is bound to collapse. So, we cannot be throwing money into a deep hole where things are not maintained.
— Pemmy Majodina, minister of water and sanitation
“Anything that is not operated properly and maintained properly is bound to collapse. So, we cannot be throwing money into a deep hole where things are not maintained. We are going to sign an agreement with the municipality to send our people here to come and monitor the infrastructure.
“For instance, now we are assisting them to build a bigger dam. We are going to bring money from other municipalities that did not use their grant to ensure that we bring the boreholes up to speed,” Majodina said.
At the Sedgefield and Karatra plant, mayor Thando Matika said that since last year, the plant has had a technical issue that caused regular water outages.
“Salinity in the water is very high, which means we can’t use that water for supplying, as it becomes too salty.
“Whenever there are high tides, the lagoon water mixes with the water coming from the river when raining, which means we will not use it, as the current technical problem cannot separate the water from the salt; we need the national government to assist with that,” he said.
Infrastructure services director Regenald Wesso said at Akkerkloof the operation of the dam is no longer controlled remotely since it’s been vandalised.
“Our compounds down there and valve chambers operate the system. Once we start pumping downstream, we need to send teams up here to open the valve so they can pump, and once we’re done pumping, somebody has to manually close the valve again. So it’s quite a strenuous and labour-intensive process how we operate it,” Wesso said.
Dam levels are at 16%, Wesso said.
Infrastructure manager Rhoydon Parry said a plan to build a dam with a bigger capacity has been in the pipeline for more than 20 years.
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