Not a drop to drink
2006-08-03
WELLINGTON residents woke up to find their water supply had dried up on Wednesday last week.
The “drought” in a large part of Wellington was caused when scheduled annual maintenance work on the Wemmershoek water treatment works by Cape Town Municipality took longer than the 48 hours expected, causing Wellington reservoirs to run dry.
Maintenance work started on Monday evening 24 July and eventually took ten hours longer than planned due to problems on the Cape Town pipeline.
Eventually, a water tanker was made available from early evening on Wednesday to distribute water to affected areas until water supply was restored.
The supply from Wemmershoek was restored just after 10:00 on Thursday morning, but additional time was required to fill the empty water network and reservoirs.
Water supply to the last high lying areas was restored by 19:00 on Thursday evening.
A Drakenstein spokesman apologised for the water cuts, but pointed out that two projects are to be implemented during the current financial year, to prevent a recurrence.
A new pipeline link is to be built between the 136 million litre Leliefontein reservoir at Paarl and the Wellington main supply line to prevent future interruptions, while a new 3,5 million litre reservoir in Blouvlei will also alleviate water supply problems.
Pearl Valley Estate was also without water on Wednesday due to maintenance work on their pipeline.
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