With just days to go before the metro declares the holiday season open and welcomes visitors to the city, the Buffalo City Metro on Wednesday issued an urgent alert for residents in East London and Mdantsane to boil their tap water before drinking it. The warning came after the Umzonyana Water Treatment Works was forced offline following cable theft. The outage disrupted filtration and chlorination processes at the plant, raising concerns about the safety of the water flowing into homes.
BCM spokesperson Bongani Fuzile said electricity to the water treatment plant had been restored and plant restart procedures were under way. Blocked sand filters meant backwashing needed to be done over 12 hours to restore treatment capacity. “Water production will gradually increase during this period, but reservoir levels and water pressures across the system are expected to remain low until tomorrow [Thursday].” Fuzile did not answer questions on when the cable theft was detected, what level of risk the outage posed to residents, when water testing results would be available and if BCM would publish these, or what measures the municipality was taking to ensure residents were protected.
There was also no answer on what was being done to safeguard facilities to prevent future cable theft at critical infrastructure. Border-Kei Chamber of Business CEO Lizelle Maurice said the metro could not afford having contaminated water and would lose tourism revenue. “We cannot have the same problem as Durban where they lost tourists due to high levels of E.
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coli in their water. BCM should act fast.” Kevin Harris, spokesperson for public interest group Green Ripple, said: “Green Ripple is astounded by the lack of security at this key infrastructure that poses such a risk to hundreds of thousands of residents. “Clean water is a fundamental human right enshrined in our constitution.”
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