Three Months Water Supply For Ilembe

"The problem is, we do not have enough water tankers. The little we do have, majority are hired. To date iLembe has spent more than R15 million on hiring water tankers. This is costing us R6000 a day for one water tanker. We are looking at a budget of no less than R300 million to buy our own," said the Mayor.

The District Municipality is currently faced with a mammoth task of transporting water from Mandeni Local Municipality (which source is the uThukela River) to KwaDukuza and Maphumulo local municipalities.

"We are getting water from Mandeni but there are indications as well that uThukela River is also steadily running dry," he said.

For the past two weeks, His Worship has a led a team of municipal officials heeding calls from residents to view streams and other possible water sources in various areas in the District.

"We are in the process of drilling boreholes where there is groundwater and doing tests to see if the water is fit for human consumption. Should it not be potable than we look into purchasing treatment plants to avoid our people getting diseases and the likes," said Cllr Mdabe.

As of Friday, 30 October, the Hazelmere Dam was producing 45 million litres of water with it levels being below 30%. Hazelmere Dam supplies water to parts of iLembe District (including holiday towns such as Ballito, Zimbali, Salt Rock, and Sheffield Beach etc.) and eThekwini Metro.

"We are appealing to all our residents to please continue to save and help us prolong the number of days we have water. As things stand, iLembe District Municipality has enough water for about 120 days. It doesn't look like the weather is about to change so it is important that we save the little that we have to survive," said the Mayor.

Residents are urged to conserve water by not washing cars, driveways, windows, buildings, filling up swimming pools, watering gardens etc.

"We appeal to our people to reuse water as much as they can. This is a national disaster and is beyond anyone's control. We urge people to be patient and to be considerate and to enable water tankers to supply as many households as possible by bringing reasonable containers to be filled up," said His Worship.