Port Elizabeth - The Department of Water and Sanitation has explained what led to the decision to slash the allocation of water the Nelson Mandela Bay metro (Gqeberha -Port Elizabeth) can draw from the Kouga dam.
The metro of about 1.5 million people is on Friday set to begin its day zero where some places are set to run out of water and as a result it has put up emergency weather collection points.
Since it has been updating its residents about plans to mitigate the impact and explaining what led to the crisis, on 27 June 2022, it posted a note on its website where it was explaining the water levels in various dams supplying it with water.
PHOTOS: Ahead of Nelson Mandela Bay's (Gqeberha - Port Elizabeth) day zero where some areas are expected to run out of water, we visited the Eastern Cape city to find out what the people are doing to get themselves prepared. To others, it was business as usual. @IOL pic.twitter.com/0Ad1rZCS7a
— Sihle Mavuso (@ZANewsFlash) July 7, 2022
There are five dams the metro relies on for water. They are Kouga (the biggest one), Groendal, Impofu, Churchill and Lorie.
In the note, the municipality alerted its residents that their allocation from Kouga has been exhausted.
“NMBM (Nelson Mandela Bay Metro) has already abstracted its full allocation from the Kouga dam. Remaining water is for agricultural use,” read the note from the municipality.
The metro did not respond when asked by IOL whether rapid population growth which is caused by the growing wave of rural to the urban movement of people led to their allocation being exhausted ahead of time.
However, the Department of Water and Sanitation was able to explain what led to the allocation changes. Portia Makhanya, the head of the department in the Eastern Cape province said a seven-year drought and over-reliance on Kouga led to them reducing the metro’s allocation.
“A total of 30% (domestic) of 70% (agriculture) are the licensed allocations. There has been a prolonged drought for 7 years which led to restrictions of 40% for domestic and 85% for agriculture and these are set annually. Therefore, allocations are set annually from July to June each year. The other dams used by the metro were critically low and they had to stop abstracting from those but from Kouga dam, whilst installing floating pumps to reach water below abstraction level.
“During this time the metro used more from the Kouga dam to supply its users. By this they depleted the volume allocated for the year before end (of) June. We are now in the new water year for revised allocations starting in July. And based on the analysis or model that is being run we will get new allocations for this year to meet user requirements and to ensure that the system does not fail,” Makhanya told IOL.
sihle.mavuso@inl.co.za
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