Pretoria – The Department of Water and Sanitation has advised that it will be implementing a planned outage of its raw water bulk pipeline between the Jericho pump station and the Kriel power station from 20 October to 31 October 2014.
During the course of this outage the communities of Ermelo, Davel and Kriel as well as Eskom power stations, mines and farmers will be affected as they get bulk raw water supply from this pipeline.
The department, which is mandated to regularly maintain its infrastructure, said the pipeline is older than 27 years and is classified as “ageing infrastructure”.
“As such, the need for its regular maintenance to sustain its life-span is consequently of utmost importance. The department will therefore be implementing this planned water outage to ensure that this key infrastructure is maintained to sustain the delivery of raw water to users,” said the department.
Advanced leak detection technology has been deployed to check which areas are in need of urgent repairs. In addition, the Jericho and Camden pump stations need mechanical refurbishment which can only be attended to if the pipe-line is taken out of operation.
The department said it had considered the impact on all users and contingency plans will be put in place. Alternative supply is being arranged by municipalities in affected areas.
The water interruptions will be as follows:
- Ermelo (south) - from 23 October to 28 October
- Davel - from 20 October to 28 October
- Kriel - from 20 October to 31 October 2014
These dates reflect the actual interruption of supply on the entire pipeline and not necessarily the length of the interruptions in the various towns.
The reason for the variance in outage dates is due to the length of pipeline that needs to be recharged/refilled after the outage and this unfortunately is limited to the confines of the pipe parameters.
The department urged all stakeholders to consider everyone in the supply system and use available water sparingly and optimally. – SAnews.gov.za
