NATIONAL NEWS - The City of Cape Town has issued a warning to residents about possible disruptions to water and sanitation services as a result of load shedding.
In a statement, the City’s Water and Sanitation Directorate urged communities to reduce water consumption as far as possible and to adopt water-saving measures such as only flushing toilets when necessary to alleviate the pressure on the networks.
Acting Mayco member for Water and Sanitation, Siseko Mbandezi, said that while the Sanitation Department has permanent generators fitted at all wastewater treatment plants, 85 larger priority water and sewer pump stations were fitted with permanent generators as a measure to increase the resilience of water and sanitation supply systems.
“We have limited availability of mobile generators, and some pump stations might overflow if load shedding is implemented for longer than two hours at a time,” Mbandezi said. “However, with severe load shedding large areas for example without power, it is not logistically possible to prevent overflows entirely, in which case the operational teams do their utmost to contain and clean up such flows. “
“Our maintenance staff are on standby and will use mobile generators to power smaller pumps. All pump stations are fitted with telemetry to help us monitor the sump levels of the facilities.”
In terms of water services, Mbandezi added that most of the City of Cape Town’s supply use gravity to help carry water from higher-lying dams to consumers after treatment.
The city’s water treatment is equipped with standby generators to ensure that clean drinking water is continuously provided during load shedding.
“Some higher-lying areas may experience low pressure or supply disruptions in the event of a power outage affecting the booster water pump stations, which are required in some areas to convey water to the reservoirs supplying the higher-lying areas across the City,” Mbandezi said.
Residents in these areas, particularly those in the Northern and Southern parts of Cape Town are likely to experience low pressure due to the impact of load shedding.
