Water levels stabilise in Northern Durban after valve repair, leaks, bursts pop up

WHILE the water supply has been restored in many areas in North Durban, an unintended consequence has been a number of bursts and leaks reported across Ward 35, 36 and 34. Some reservoirs ran dry last week due to a disruption to the water supply caused by a control valve which had seized on the Nagle Dam aqueduct system supplying the Durban Heights Water Treatment Works. This significantly reduced the volume of raw water reaching the Durban Heights Water Treatment Works, which supplies water to the City through the Northern and Southern Aqueducts.

The fault resulted in a supply deficit of approximately 150 megalitres of water to the eThekwini Metro since Wednesday last week (March 11). “We have had a rough time since Friday last week with the reservoir levels fluctuating quite a bit. We only had one water tanker for the entire weekend which wasn’t sufficient.

The Virginia Reservoir which supplies several areas in my ward is stable for now, but that could change. The bad news is as the water has been restored, there has been pipe bursts and leaks on meters across the ward. There is also a critical shortage of plumbers which means some leaks are running for days,” he said.

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“We had some downtime on the first day with eight hours without water in Glenashley and 10 hours in uMhlanga Ridge. The leaks are to be expected because when the system runs dry and the pressure returns, this happens. There have certainly been more leaks since the water has returned.

Unfortunately the City don’t have the human resources with regards to plumbers so bursts and leaks are taking much longer to get repaired,” he said. “Water supply has been restored and unfortunately there were no water tankers available during the downtime. While residents are happy to have water again, all the leaks that dried up whilst we were without water have sprung up again,” he said.

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