David Magae’s Post

Transcript

Welcome back. Thank you very much for staying with the South African. Morning Now. Mahali's Water, the sole water board in the NW, says its ability to meet the water demands of bulk customers is being severely affected by low water levels at Falcon P Dam. Mahali Water attributes this crisis to below average rainfall and ongoing heat waves. To discuss this further and in more detail, we're joined by Mahalia's Water spokesperson, David Mahaya. David, good morning. Thank you so much for speaking to us here on the South African morning. Let's start with, you know how long this has been a persisting issue, this low rainfall, etcetera. How bad is the situation? With morning myself O and to your viewers, well, we've been experiencing this situation for quite a while. You would remember that the South African Weather Service did won a couple of weeks ago that you will be experiencing. You know, some sporting temperatures in the central regions of the country and of course the northwest was not an exception to it. But you know, to access debate this situation, you then have a situation where at this time of day within our area of operation, we have a spike in water demand. So that has really made things slightly worse than is normally the case. And in in addition to that, not that you don't have sufficient rain, you have a high rapidity of evaporation. So the. Water levels in the, in the dam have sufficiently, you know, gone down quite rapidly to the extent that we then had to implement water demand management. Because if we then don't manage the manner in which we then produce a portable water, we could have, we could have ended up in a situation where we have nothing to actually produce and provide for in terms of drinking water to communities. So what are we talking in terms of the dam levels at the moment? We we currently sitting at about 23% of raw water in the Falcon Dam. So normally the dam goes at about 95%. Sometimes it even overflows. And at that particular point systems are running efficiently and optimally and we don't have issues with the kind of demand that we would be experiencing at this time of the year. But now that the demand has obviously spiked, we haven't had sufficient rainfall in the region. Now we've had to put in a plan to make sure that whatever we have at least in the system is able to be then. Said, you know, equitably to the extent that there should be, you know, the norm up until we have a situation where we can report back on improved dam levels. We in which case that does not happen. It means we'll just have to implement more restrictions to ensure that we then provide water equitably to the minds, the municipalities up until such a time that the situation changes. So in terms of your consumers or customers, how many households are we talking? It's quite accessible number because from the Crocodile W catchment area, which includes the heartbeat support, we're providing potable water, Rustenburg Local Municipality, Moses Gotani Local Municipality, Thabazimbi in the Waterberg district and all of the mining operations. Yeah, yeah, that's got. Yeah. So that the the the mining operations that are scattered in the three local municipalities and in excess you're looking at about 3 1/2 million people that depend on us as what about to provide portable water. We're not only talking about water that is used for consumption, not even for industrial use. So it's quite accessible number of people that are going to be affected both domestic and non domestic customers. So I don't want to cause panic David at all, but 23% of those dam levels is not enough. To sustain. So what will you know Mahalia's water be doing? What kind of mitigating, you know, avenues are you going to be taking to stop or to make sure that people still have water by December? Are you cutting usage? Is there going to be some water throttling like WE Quality and Joburg? Well, what we we have done which is what we communicate communicated yesterday is that we have now reduced immediately our levels of abstraction by 30%. So we have reduced the manner in which we are now taking the raw water in the dam into the treatment plant for treatment purposes by less than 30%, which therefore means that obviously you are then going to have a situation where they're going to be intermittent water interruptions. And the reason is to is to ensure that we don't get into a situation where we run out of the air. Our role we're taking the dam to then treat for people to then consume in which case then we will then be saying we are already at day 0. So we are really are letting a situation where we wouldn't have any water to treat and to provide to communities. And it is for that reason that we have then reduced our operation in terms of abstracting raw water OK them by about 30% in the hope that in the time to come, you know nature will be on our side, there will be an improvement in the dam levels then things will improve. All the time. Alright David, thank you so much for your time. David Mahaya is the spokesperson for Mahali's Water. All right, let's take you to a short ad break. Now we've got lots in store for you, including your sports.