The Garden Route Dam in George in the Southern Cape, one of the larger dams in the region is over-flowing.
This comes as the Western Cape experiences drought conditions. Recently, the Southern Cape town also faced its own water crisis. But recent good rainfall has changed that.
The dam wall is set to be raised to increase its capacity by 25%. George municipality’s, Reggie Wesso, says they will keep their water restrictions to support other water stressed towns.
“Basically in support with the rest of the province and the country and the dire state of water elsewhere, council decided last March that level 2b restrictions will remain. So the level 2b what it basically implies is that we want to effect just behavioural change and maintain the good usage of our water at this stage.”
Residents have welcomed news of the over-flowing dam.
“It’s an extra 25%. I think it’s a good plan. They wanted to do it about 5 years ago already but now it’s going to be implemented.
George a couple of years ago was in big drought and then we had big floods so I think the sooner we get our dam walls raised the more water we can keep. It’s really impressive. I think we really lucky compared to other towns. We literally went from having nothing to literally overflowing.”
Dam levels in the Western Cape remain critically low despite rainfall over the Easter long weekend.
The average dam levels in the province are at 17.6% compared to 24.3% during the same period last year.
James-Brent Stuam is Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning Department spokesperson.
“Unfortunately the system has seen below average rainfall for three to four years now so we need a lot more rain than what we’ve been seeing; we are expecting some more rain in the coming months. But we want to call on people and urge the public to continue to conserve water even if it is raining because we must allow the system to recover as far as possible.”
-Sagree Chetty, Mlamli Maneli
