Status of Drought Augmentation Projects
Published: January 19, 2023<< BACK TO NEWS
By Executive Mayor, Cllr Retief Odendaal
Nelson Mandela Bay is currently facing the most severe drought on record. We are currently in year eight of this extended drought and the situation is becoming more severe by the day.
Dam levels continue to dwindle with total capacity now standing at an alarming low 14.34%.
The Impofu Dam, the biggest dam from which the City extracts water from, is at its lowest in history-a mere seven percent with less than 1% being available for extraction.
Together with the Department of Water and Sanitation, the City has invested over R1.2 billion to implement a number of water augmentation and drought mitigation projects across the City to mitigate the effects of the drought on residents and cushion the City’s economy.
These include upgrading of bulk infrastructure, addressing bottlenecks within the distribution network and fast tracking of emergency augmentation water supplies.
Today I shared information as to the progress on 10 of our most important projects currently underway. By the end of March 2023, 9 of these projects would have been brought online.
The most significant of these was the completion of the Nooitgedacht Water Treatment Works: Phase 3 which has ensured an additional 70 Ml of water from the Gariep Dam being available to the City on a daily basis.
By the end of March 2023 most of the borehole projects that the City has embarked on will be online adding an additional 30 Ml to our system.
We are thereby diversifying our sources of potable water as a means of mitigating the effects of not only the current but also future droughts.
These groundwater schemes will reduce abstraction from the severely stressed Western dams, thereby preserving what little storage remains and developing a sustainable water supply resource for the future. The following sites have been identified for borehole extraction: Coegakop, Bushy Park, St Georges Park, Fairview, Fort Nottingham, Glendinning.
The aforesaid is a brief outline of progress with our efforts to fight day zero in Nelson Mandela Bay. We call on all residents to also do their part by reducing consumption significantly and keeping to the 9ll per household per month. The only way we can successfully overcome this crisis fight the drought is by working together -one drop goes a long way.
Ends
Issued by the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Office of the Executive Mayor. For more information, please contact Mayoral Media Liaison Officer, Jeanine Nel at 082 512 5631.
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