Updates on the Water Shut-down and Restoration is availalbe @ City Wide Water Shutdown 13-15 Nov 2015 – Details & Updates
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There will be a City Wide Water Shutdown from 5pm on the evening of Friday, 13 November 2015 to the Morning of Sunday, 15 November 2015 to enable the replacement of two valves on the main pipelines feeding the City from the Riverton Water-purification Plant.
NOTE: Any unforeseen complications may delay water restoration.
The municipality is requesting that households make adequate provision for water over the period. On average, it is recommend that between 150 litres to 300 litres are required per family. Contingency plans are being drawn up to supply the affected areas with mobile and static water tanks which will be supervised at all times to avoid misuse. This process will be managed by the Fire Emergency Services and the public can call the telephone numbers 053 8324211 in this regard.
Sol Plaatje Municipality will also use this opportunity for replace more corroded pipes at Newton Reservoir.
The municipality plan to replace twenty two pipes and two pipelines at Newton Reservoir which are severely corroded and burst regularly. Last weekend large parts of Kimberley was left bone dry after one these pipelines burst, and water had to be cut to allow repairs.
Full press release from Sol Plaatje Municipality below.
The Sol Plaatje Municipality (SPM) will be conducting further work on the two main supply pipelines that deliver water to the city of Kimberley from Riverton Purifications works. This phase will entail the replacement of valves on both the 600mm and the 925mm pipe lines on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th November 2015.
Despite our best efforts not to interrupt supply, we advise that the city will experience an interruption of water supply to the whole city from Friday evening to Sunday morning. Our reserves are at full capacity and we wish to maintain this position for the hot and dry season.
It is expected that the total replacement work will take about 36-40 hours from start to finish. Accordingly we will cease pumping water from Riverton at 5pm on Friday 13th November as well as supply to the city from Newton Reservoir. Work will commence thereafter and will continue till late Saturday night. It is intended to supply water when work is complete.
It is for this reason that we will be asking all the residents to only use water sparingly during the particular weekend. We urge society to use water for essential purposes such as drinking, cooking and personal hygiene etc and to avoid car washing and gardening.
Each house hold is being requested to make adequate provision for the period. On average, we recommend that between 150 litres to 300 litres will be required per family while we would also like to caution everybody on the safety children when storing such quantities. Contingency plans are being drawn up to supply the affected areas with mobile and static water tanks which will be supervised at all times to avoid misuse This process will be managed by the Fire Emergency Services and the public can call the telephone numbers 053 8324211 in this regard.
BACKGROUND TO PROJECT
The Sol Plaatje Municipality (SPM) draws water from the Vaal River that is located 16 kilometres from Kimberley and pumped to Kimberley Newton Reservoir while the areas of Galeshewe and Roodepan is serviced directly from the pipeline.
During the past years our water business has not been operating at optimum levels and that unacceptable levels of water losses have occurred. These water loss problems was also compounded by commercial problems in invoicing and collecting revenue from consumers. The above is resulting in high levels of non-revenue water which was putting financial strain on the municipality. To a large extend we have minimised the commercial losses but now need to fix the technical issues.
FOCUS AREAS
Two areas will be focused on, (a) namely the installation of new valves on the two mainlines at the midlands point. This will enable us to control and manage supply between the two lines. (b) The installation of a bypass link the 450 line and the 650 line near Barkly Rd as well, as related work of zonal metering project. This will improve supply to areas such as Galeshewe, Homelite and Kimdustria. Project leader for the work will be Mr Hennie Harding and Mr Motale Selesho of Sol Plaatje municipality while the work will be by contracted companies.
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