eThekwini Municipality Mayor Cyril Xaba announces water restrictions for the City’s consumers. Picture: Supplied
Durban — EThekwini Municipality will implement water curtailment next week to ensure equal distribution of water to all residents.
This was announced by mayor Cyril Xaba at a council meeting on Monday.
His announcement was in compliance with the Water and Sanitation Department’s directive to uMngeni-uThukela Water to stop unauthorised water oversupply to the City.
In his report to the council, the mayor said since the City’s request to the department to extend uMngeni-uThukela Water’s ‘oversupply’ was declined the water entity would reduce its water supply to the City by 8.4%.
The water entity has been pumping an unauthorised 1406 megalitres a day to eThekwini, instead of the authorised 1287 megalitres. This meant that the City was being oversupplied with 118 megalitres a day.
Xaba blamed this high water usage on rapid urbanisation, ageing infrastructure, leaks and illegal connections.
“For this reason, the Department of Water and Sanitation has imposed water curtailment on the system which comes into effect on October 10, 2024.
“To ensure that residents are not adversely affected, the City will be implementing water rationing where demand is too high or exceeds available supply and put restrictors in water meters to all consumers,” said Xaba.
To deal with non-revenue water losses, the mayor said the City will embark on metering all unmetered consumers; improve turnaround time in repairing leaks and pipe bursts through the deployment of ward-based plumbers; and disconnect all illegal connections.
The mayor pleaded with residents to work with the City to save water, not only for now but also for future generations.
“We want to indicate that we did everything in our power to avert this situation by writing to the department requesting the postponement of the curtailment while we implement measures to save water, including non-revenue water.
“However, we are at the stage where the ultimate goal is to avert a situation where water supply gets depleted from the source.”
Water and Sanitation head Ednick Msweli, who is also acting Deputy City Manager, called for calm, saying there was no need for panic since the 8.4% water reduction will be implemented gradually for a year, said the mayor.
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