City of Cape Town issue warning: 'PLEASE reduce water consumption!'

CapeTalk's Pippa Hudson, standing in for John Maytham, speaks to Michael Killick, Director of Bulk Services: Water & Sanitation at the City of Cape Town.

Listen below:

The City of Cape Town has sent a 'precautionary notice' to customers asking them to reduce their water consumption due to a series of issues putting 'significant strain' on the City's water supply.

The notice comes after a burst at the Voëlvlei main, which is a key component of the Western Cape Water Supply System, while the City's largest water treatment plant goes offline for routine maintenance.

"We had a burst on our Voëlvlei main, which is a 1.5 metre diameter main feeding the City of Cape Town from the Voëlvlei dam, and we repaired that main on 15 August.... that put some constraints on our system and our reservoir storage dropped. We normally like to keep our reservoir storage of the bulk water supply system above 70% in case of emergencies, so we recovered from that burst and we did the repairs..."

- Michael Killick, Bulk Services: Water & Sanitation - City of Cape Town

"Then we had scheduled a planned maintenance of our largest water treatment plant, which is the Flora Water Treatment Plant, for two weeks, and that includes the cleaning of a 600 mega-litre reservoir... if we take that 600 mega-litre reservoir out of the system as well, our storage drops to 50% while we're undergoing planned maintenance."

- Michael Killick, Bulk Services: Water & Sanitation - City of Cape Town

"It is only a precautionary notice... we are progressing very well with the planned maintenance, and the intention is to bring the Flora Water Treatment Plant back online tomorrow afternoon. So, hopefully by tomorrow afternoon, the storage in our reservoirs will start increasing from the 50%..."

- Michael Killick, Bulk Services: Water & Sanitation - City of Cape Town

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