Naziziphiwo Buso
Nelson Mandela Bay Executive Mayor Retief Odendaal says the Metro has been involved in a juggling act in trying to manage the water resources of the city in order to avert disaster.
Mayor Odendaal was addressing members of the media at the St George's Park ground-source development project on Thursday.
Its been mooted to supply 1 mega litre of water per day to Central, Humewood and South End - once completed.
Construction of the R54 million project commenced in July 2021 and is expected to be completed this month.
Odendaal said this is one of the Metro's 10 augmentation projects aimed at averting day zero.
The Impofu Dam, which is the largest supply dam that the Metro currently extracts water from - is at its lowest level ever at 6.91% - and technically, taking 7% of dead storage into account - has no more water available.
But, giving further details on the augmentation projects, Mayor Odendaal said the Impofu barges would be moved a further 6 km south-eastwards towards the dam wall in order to draw water until a 3% storage capacity is reached.
Mayor Odendaal says it's estimated that by the end of March 2023, nine of these augmentation projects would have been brought online.
He said 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.
"Diversifying our sources of potable water as a means of mitigating the effects of not only the current but also future droughts is critically important," he said.
He said the City has identified six sites with respect to the Groundwater Resource Development project. .
These are Coegakop, Bushy Park, St George's Park, Fairview, Fort Nottingham and Glendenning.
The DWS in the Eastern Cape has meanwhile reiterated its plea to consumers to use water sparingly, refrain from vandalizing water infrastructure and report water leaks to local authorities.
This is in the face of dwindling dam levels in parts of the province.
The decline of the Algoa Water System, which supplies water to the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro and surrounding areas, is the most alarming with the current level of the Churchill, Kouga, Loerie, Groendal and Impofu dams at a mere 14.34% of total combined capacity.
However, 5.4% of that amount is considered dead storage which means that these dams only have 8.92% of water available for use by residents of the Kouga and Nelson Mandela Bay municipalities.
In stark contrast, The Amathole Water Supply System, which supplies water to Buffalo City Metro and surrounding areas is sitting at 102.8% this week.
The main supply dams to Komani and Butterworth are also full.
