Cape Town residents urged to use water sparingly while water supply systems replenished

CAPE TOWN - Cape Town residents are being urged to use water sparingly while the city’s water supply systems are being replenished.

The metro issued a precautionary notice a few days ago, after its reservoir storage capacity dropped to around 50%.

Director of Bulk Services at the City's Water & Sanitation Department, Michael Killick, said this caused some concern.

"We had a burst on our Voëlvlei main, which is a 1.5 meter diameter main feeding the City of Cape Town, from the Voëlvlei dam, and we repaired that main on the 15th of August, so that did put some constraints on our system and our reservoir storage dropped."

Killick said the metro tried to keep the bulk water storage level at around 70%, just in case of emergencies but added that the scheduled two-week maintenance on the Faure water treatment plant, one of the city’s largest, added to the drop in reservoir storage levels.

"And that includes the cleaning of a 600-megalitre reservoir, so if you take that 600-megalitre reservoir out of the system as well, our storage drops to 50%, while we are undergoing this planned maintenance."

Killick said the plan was to bring the Faure water treatment plant back online on Wednesday afternoon.

"It was a precautionary notice, just to notify our consumers that the storage levels are low, due to the planned maintenance but hopefully they will recover when we start up the Faure water treatment plant."

He said the city’s daily water consumption was approximately 815 mega litres per day at the moment.