EXECUTIVE MAYORS MESSAGE TO RESIDENTS REGARDING WATER
Fellow Residents of Buffalo City Metro, Receive our Kind greetings! We are speaking to you today to update you regarding the challenge of water quality and reliability impacting certain areas of our City.

On the 08th of January 2022 our City experienced worst storms and flooding incidents it has experienced in its history, with the situation now officially declared a disaster. 
The devastation that was suffered by many of our communities is too huge. We now know that the storm caused death and devastation mainly in Mdantsane and Duncan Village but we can confirm that all parts of our City were negatively impacted on by the storm. 
The infrastructure of our city was also hardest hit, more particularly roads, electrical infrastructure and buildings. The floods also negatively impacted on our water infrastructure and the quality of the water that residents of certain areas of our Metro complained about is one of the indicators of the magnitude of the floods. We want to assure the residents of the Metro that we are working over the clock to ensure that the situation is improved. 
The raw water from Bridle Drift Dam to Umzonyana Water Treatment Works was negatively impacted by the flash floods which negatively affected the extent the plant is able to treat and release water into the distribution system. Because the system is taking longer to fully recover due to the high water demand, the City has had to consider the situation holistically.
We are implementing a number of mitigation plans to recover the Umzonyana Water Supply System and amongst these are the following:
•    We are providing water tankers to assist the affected areas.
•    We have brought on board an external expert to advise on solutions in order to destabilize the system 
•    We will cut water supply between 22h00 and 04h00 every evening to build up the storage for the high lying areas and this will be implemented until this system sufficiently recovers. This will not impact all areas of the Metro. 
We want to apologise to all residents of our metro for this situation. As the political leadership of the institution we will be monitoring the water challenge daily and we will give regular updates to the residents of the affected areas up until the water distribution system is to the requisite standard.
Issued by the Executive Mayor of Buffalo City Metro
Cllr Xola Pakati
For arranging interviews with the Executive Mayor contact Luzuko Buku on 0832548463

2022-01-28