It was not too long ago that Nelson Mandela Bay teetered on the brink of Day Zero. For what felt like forever, those of us living in the Bay were restricted to consuming 50 litres of water per person a day, with many of us doing our best to survive just another day with water coming out our taps. This as the dams supplying our region with potable water dried up due to drought.
But this time, the Bay’s water problems are not simply the result of drought. Rain patterns may have changed, but what has remained constant is a lack of political urgency, a revolving door of leadership, ageing infrastructure and a failure to communicate honestly with the people who carry the burden. The Herald reported on Thursday how, in recent weeks, the metro has battled an overlapping series of setbacks from pipe bursts and pump failures to rolling power dips and reduced production at key treatment plants.
Alarmingly, more than half the metro’s potable water — 57.62%, or 73.71-million kilolitres — is wasted due to water leaks. So dire is the situation that Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber chief executive Denise van Huyssteen said the metro was heading towards another water management crisis. Residents have become unwilling experts in storing water, scheduling their lives around trickling taps and navigating WhatsApp water alerts from their ward councillors — if they are lucky enough to have ward councillors who care to update them.
Read Full Article on The Herald
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Businesses, too, are affected as they absorb the blow of lost trading hours, higher operating costs and disrupted services. This despite the fact that access to sufficient water is a fundamental human right enshrined in the SA constitution. And the only way to ensure that our water supply is reliable and stable is to implement a structured programme, as recommended by Van Huyssteen, to ensure proactive, planned and ongoing maintenance of the metro’s water infrastructure takes place.
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