Nightly emergency water shut-downs have already begun in Makana to ensure that reservoirs are full in the mornings, Grocott's Mail established on Friday. Technical and infrastructure services director Thembinkosi Myalato said the shut-downs began on 4 December and have been taking place between 11pm and 4am.
Nightly emergency water shut-downs have already begun in Makana to ensure that reservoirs are full in the mornings, Grocott's Mail established on Friday. Technical and infrastructure services director Thembinkosi Myalato said the shut-downs began on 4 December and have been taking place between 11pm and 4am.
"This is meant to allow our reservoirs to pick up, so that in the morning they would be 100%," he said.
"The storage capacity, according to national standards, has to be 48 hours so that it would allow us to do maintenance and there would be not water outages, but our storage capacity is only six hours which is why we decided to do these shut-downs at night," Myalato explained.
Many people haven't even noticed the shut-downs however, because most are asleep when they happen. Myalato also said that even though the reservoirs aren't releasing water, there is still enough in the city's pipes for night owls to use. He emphasised that situations like this are why the municipality needs to upgrade its maintenance infrastructure.
