The Department of Water and Sanitation has started the process of releasing five billion litres of water from the Berg River Dam near Franschhoek in the Boland into the Misverstand Dam on the West Coast. This is being done to ease the impact of the drought in the area.
The department says the water will be for domestic and industrial use only.
The Misverstand Dam supplies water to the West Coast district municipality.
The Department’s Chief Director of Infrastructure Operations, Leonardo Manus, says some dams are still low.
“That dam is extremely low, we went through all modalities of getting water to Misverstand Dam and the best way of doing it at this point in time is to release water from the Bergriver Dam. We do have law enforcement because there are users along the route that got abstraction capacity for other purposes, this release is purely for domestic use.”
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