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Sol Plaatje Municipality residents brace for water shutdown

Construction workers in Sol Plaatje Municipality working on the water pipeline.
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The planned water shutdown by the Sol Plaatje Municipality is reportedly going to commence on Wednesday night.

The water shutdown, which was scheduled for last week, was postponed after consultations with all affected parties came as a result of the municipality’s ongoing construction of a new water pipeline.

The second and last pipeline is expected to be connected to the new Riverton pump station outside Kimberley, to complete the R50 million projects to sort out the water inconsistency in the city.

The municipality started the project earlier this year by connecting the 600 millimeter pipeline and says they have no other alternative but to connect the new pump station because the old one has already reached its lifespan.

Residents are expected to be without water from Wednesday night till Friday evening.

Municipal spokesperson Sello Matsie said, “There will be an electrical switch over where the new pump station is being connected with a portion of the electricity that is outstanding and also connecting the new pipeline to the pump station.”

“We have an old pump station but we will be decommissioning it, there are a few issues with it, the pumps are about 50 years, 60 years old and it is more expensive to refurbish and to fix them than these new ones. The capacity of the new pumps is up to 1500 litres per second whereas those old ones where a 1000 litre per second,” added Matsie.

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