Leave is cancelled for staff maintaining and operating Makana Municipality's water supply during the National Arts Festival. That's the word from Makana's director of infrastructure and technical services Dali Mlenzana, who says there's going to be enough water – and it will be safe to drink.
Leave is cancelled for staff maintaining and operating Makana Municipality's water supply during the National Arts Festival. That's the word from Makana's director of infrastructure and technical services Dali Mlenzana, who says there's going to be enough water – and it will be safe to drink.
"The last few months saw major projects being completed on the bulk water transfer systems and process units on both Waainek and James Kleynhans Water Supply Systems," Mlenzana told Grocott's Mail this week.
"This resulted in them being capacitated to operate at full designed capacity."
He said that if needed, these systems could be pushed to around 10% beyond their respective designed capacities.
"While this is obviously not the ideal situation, testing of the systems has been carried out over the last few weeks to ensure that the most can be squeezed out of the plants in the worst-case scenario.
"Both plants are currently operating at full designed capacity during the normal demand period," Mlenzana said.
"Sufficient critical spares have been secured to ensure that breakdowns are handled as quickly as possible."
He said plans for the bulk water supply during the National Arts Festival included the following measures:
· Planned shutdowns have been initiated well in advance to ensure that all critical equipment, pumps and motors are well serviced and maintained. This will reduce the risk of untimely breakdowns.
· The initiatives to optimise processes allowed a margin for unexpected supply risks.
· All lay dam reserves will be filled to their maximum just before the Festival to ensure that Waainek water treatment works can operate if there is a raw water supply problem from Howieson's Poort Dam.
· Improved redundancy of the electricity supply, as well as improved pumping availability, has ensured that water supply challenges from the dam are minimised even further.
· All bulk reservoirs are being operated at between 80% and 100%, even at peak demand, against maximum designed capacity. Makana and MBB will ensure that the reticulation pressure zones and service reservoirs are balanced so that abnormally high demand is curbed. This will enable reservoir levels to be maintained well within the operating band.
· No leave has been granted to any of the operational and maintenance staff on both the Makana Municipality and Amatola Water teams during the Festival. This will ensure full availability of teams to address any supply and quality issues swiftly and effectively.
"The quality of the potable water has been substantially improved since the last Festival," Mlenzana said
. "Water being supplied from the plants is meeting drinking water compliance and is safe to drink! "Amatola Water, Makana Municipality and MBB Consulting, as well as various other entities and stakeholders, have worked tirelessly over the last year and a half to improve the water situation in Grahamstown," Mlenzana said.
"Though demand has outstripped supply capability by about 10 million litres per day during the same period last year, we are confident that the integrity of the water supply system is quite capable of meeting the demand during the Festival."
