Grahamstown's water supply should be back to normal by the morning of Thursday 28 August, according to municipal officials.
This comes as major institutions, private residents and businesses across the city struggle to cope with outages, now into their fifth day.
Grahamstown's water supply should be back to normal by the morning of Thursday 28 August, according to municipal officials.
This comes as major institutions, private residents and businesses across the city struggle to cope with outages, now into their fifth day.
A team worked non-stop for 33 hours to repair a major burst on a critical pipeline early on Wednesday 20 August to little avail, and emergency plans were put into action.
In a statement yesterday the municipality said they were using two tankers to truck in water supplies to the hospitals, communities in the high-lying areas and schools. Rhodes and the army base were using their own tankers, according to the statement issued by municipal spokesperson Yoliswa Ramokolo. Two additional water tankers from Amatola Water were expected to be operational in the City by this morning.
Around 10.30pm yesterday, car lights revealed the eerie sight of residents queuing late into the night, at the Fairview spring. Residents expressed their frustration as they queued late into the night at the natural spring on the Port Alfred road, with buckets, bottles and small tanks.
Waainek Correctional Services, where up to 40 inmates share a cell, is severely affected by the water cuts. A correctional services official said inmates at Waainek were struggling to cope.
"There are cells which house up to 40 inmates and you can only imagine how difficult life can be with no water,” said the official, who asked not to be named. He said not being able to use the bathrooms put additional strain on the inmates. The official said the facility had been without water since yesterday morning. While official figures are not available, the facility is believed to house upward of 700 inmates.
Hostels at Grahamstown boarding schools have also been without water since Saturday. In a statement today, Graeme College said while the outage had caused a major inconvenience for all staff and pupils, classes and extra-mural activities were continuing as normal.
"Graeme College is lucky in that we have a borehole system which we are able to rely on in situations like this," said head of marketing at Graeme, Chanté Norton, in an official statement from the school.
"Unfortunately these situations do place an added burden on our grounds staff, who are continuously transporting water throughout our campus for daily needs – ablutions, kitchen use, etc."
Because of the frequency of the water interruptions, Graeme College would be implementing a fall-back system of rainwater tanks for the ablution blocks at Grant House, the main school facility and the Graemian Centre, she said.
"Sadly, this is an outlay of expenditure not planned for and school funds will need to be drawn on."
Graeme college houses about 80 pupils in the hostel, according to teacher Kevin Watson. Hoerskool PJ Olivier teacher Joubert Retief said that the school was in a dire situation.
"We are currently accommodating 60 pupils and the reserved water from the tanks will only last until tomorrow," Retief said yesterday. Retief said among other results, the toilets were getting messy.
Victoria Girls' High School is using water delivered by the municipal tankers. The girls in the hostels are filling bottles for flushing the toilets, said a source who asked not to be named.
"We only have [enough]water for the pupils to wash their faces," the source said.
While some businesses are thriving because of the water shortage, others fear they may have to close.
Rhodes University said they had been warned on Friday 22 August about possible problems with the water supply. Communications Officer Zamuxolo Matiwana said the university has a number of policies in place for water outages. This included providing two litres of bottled drinking water a day to students in affected residences, as well as water to flush toilets.
"Additional staff are provided to ensure the ablution areas are kept hygienically clean and toilet seat sanitiser is provided," Matiwana said in an official statement. He said water tanks outside affected residences are filled on a rotation basis, using University owned water tankers and residences without water are “twinned” with residences which do have water for showers and laundry.
While some businesses were thriving yesterday because of the water outage, others feared they might have to close. Staff at bottled water retailer Oasis were so busy on Monday, thanks to the run on water at the store, that they barely had time to talk to reporters.
Pick n Pay, along with several other businesses, filled containers at the spring to make normal operations possible. The store's Ryan Louw said the demand for bottled water was extremely high and the shop had run out of water to sell early on Monday morning. By Monday afternoon their stocks were replenished, however.
Popular restaurant Revelations has a back-up storage tank to deal with the city's frequent water outages. However, owner Lee-Ann Benson is worried her tank will run dry before the water returns. That would force her to close the restaurant, she says.
In yesterday's statement the municipality urged resident to use water sparingly when it did start to trickle through again. Ramokolo said, "It is anticipated that by late on Wednesday afternoon (27th August) some areas will again begin to receive supply from [Howieson's Poort] and that the water supply situation in Makana should be back to normal by the morning of Thursday, 28th August 2014."
Until then, the supply would be shared across the east and western systems of the City, in order to ensure all residents had access to some water.
"To do this, water from Botha’s Hill will be fed also into the Intermediate and Low level reservoirs on the Western side of the City," Ramokolo said.
"The High level reservoir will be fed from the Old Town filters pump station (water coming from Milner and Jameson dams) in order to supply the army base, correctional services, high-lying communities, the industrial area and part of Rhodes University.
"Consumers can expect a 50% usage at this time, and are urged to use water very sparingly."
