The Sol Plaatje Municipality has warned the residents of Kimberley about dropping water levels at Newton reservoir and a highlift pump that continues tripping at the Riverton water purification plant.
THE SOL Plaatje Municipality has warned the residents of Kimberley about dropping water levels at Newton reservoir and a highlift pump that continues tripping at the Riverton water purification plant.
Spokesperson for the municipality, Thoko Riet, said another highlift pump was repaired on January 10, after its electrical panel exploded.
She said that water levels started decreasing on January 8.
“An investigation was conducted and it was discovered that one of the highlift pumps was tripping at the Riverton water purification plant. The setting on the pump was continuously tripping when the water level at the reservoir reaches 50 percent. This was not supposed to happen. Each time the pump trips, we experienced a downtime of two hours which has resulted in water levels dropping at the Newton reservoir.”
Riet explained that the pumps operated with software that sets the safety parameters of the pumps.
“This was resolved on Monday. The pump is no longer tripping and there is now a continuous flow of water through the two main pipelines which supply water to Kimberley. One highlift pump that pumps clean water to Kimberley was repaired and put back into operation on January 10 after its electrical panel exploded.”
She added that the municipality’s maintenance team was also working on repairing a fifth raw water abstraction pump at the river.
“This pump will be put back to operation after it has been repaired. It will ensure that there is sufficient raw water being supplied to the treatment plant. This operation has already started and will be completed over the weekend.”
Riet stated that nightly water shutdowns would continue from 8pm until 4am until levels had stabilised.
“We are aware of the inconvenience caused by this sporadic mishap in the city, and we are doing our best to bring this situation back to normal.”
Meanwhile, an amount of R178,985 was paid for the provision of meals for workers during the water shutdown from October 6 to 10 when repairs were done to the pipeline.
Workers started work at 6pm on October 6 and were expected to work throughout the night.
Council stated that the lowest quotation was selected where two suppliers did not respond and the other two quotations were above the threshold of R200,000.
A deviation had to be granted as it was classified as an “exceptional case”.
