eThekwini will have water restrictors, rationing and low pressure for a year

Mayor orders gradual reduction in consumption over the next 12 months

03 October 2024 - 18:00 By LWAZI HLANGU
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Durban residents will have water restrictions for a year, starting next Thursday.
Durban residents will have water restrictions for a year, starting next Thursday.
Image: 123RF/andreypopov

eThekwini residents should brace themselves for intermittent water supply as the city embarks on a 12-month water curtailment programme from next week.

That is the message from eThekwini’s head of water and sanitation, Ednick Msweli, on Thursday ahead of the October 10 start to restrictions.

“All residents must expect some change: either a reduction in pressure or getting water on certain days only. That will differ from suburb to suburb.”

He said the city would employ various interventions including:

  • installation of restrictors in all consumers' water meters;
  • pressure reduction in the reticulation network;
  • metering all unmetered consumers;
  • improving turnaround times when repairing leaks and pipe bursts through deployment of ward-based plumbers;
  • community education on water conservation;
  • disconnection of illegal connections; and
  • water rationing where demand is too high or exceeds supply.

Msweli was speaking at a briefing at the Durban City Hall with mayor Cyril Xaba and officials from uMngeni-uThukela Water to outline what the water curtailment programme entails.

This follows Xaba’s announcement at the council meeting on Monday that the department of water & sanitation (DWS) had found eThekwini had exceeded its licensed abstraction allowances from the uMngeni-uThukela Water (UUW) catchment system by 8.4% and gave a directive to gradually reduce consumption over the next 12 months.

Xaba said the curtailment would allow for continued water availability to the city even during periods of below-average rainfall.

“The risk of not enforcing the abstraction limit is that, should a drought occur, there would not be sufficient water in the system for uMngeni-uThukela Water to continue providing the eThekwini municipality with a reliable water supply,” he said.

“However, if UUW implements the gradual reduction as planned, the water supply should remain stable, even with below-average rainfall. If there is below-average rainfall, any restrictions required would be more manageable.”

He maintained that factors such as rapid urbanisation, ageing infrastructure which causes water leaks, and illegal connections were some of the major contributors to the high water usage in the city.

Xaba said some of these interventions had received approval from a group of retired engineers he met on Wednesday as part of his “listening campaign”.

Msweli said the interventions were designed to ensure that the curtailment is applied equitably for everyone.

He addressed the issue of ageing infrastructure, saying the city would need R44bn to replace the water and sanitation infrastructure.

He said the city had spent about R110m so far on two pipeline replacement programmes.

“There is a programme of pipe replacements where we spend about R80m a year and another one called relays where if a pipe keeps bursting in a particular street — more than eight times in a year — we should replace the pipe in that entire street. That’s sufficient inconvenience to warrant us changing the entire pipeline. There we have spent R30m.”

We have to have something to make sure people continue to have water while we work on the more long-term problems.
Ednick Msweli, eThekwini’s head of water and sanitation

These interventions are part of what has helped the city reduce the amount of its non-revenue water losses by four percentage points from 58% at the end of the latest financial year to its current 54%.

“There is a turnaround strategy for the city and this is an area of focus and we’re hoping that we can we can sustain the reduction.”

The completion of the R28bn Upper uMkhomazi Water Project is expected to offset the majority of the eThekwini’s water-security issues.

However, the project is still a few years away from completion, according to UUW acting executive for operations Phokela Maponya.

“As per the timeline, we are looking at the end of 2032 in terms of the first drop of water coming from that particular system,” he said.

Msweli said they will continue using water tankers to help where they fall short in terms of water supply to communities, while working on long-term solutions.

“They are effectively stopgap measures. We have to have something to make sure people continue to have water while we work on the more long-term problems,” he said. “We hope water tankers are not a permanent solution but as things stand we’re going to have them for a little while yet.”

TimesLIVE


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