AN R46 million groundwater supply project at St George’s Park has been successfully completed and commissioned, giving a much-needed reprieve to the depleting local dams that supply water to the port of Port Elizabeth, Central and Humewood amongst other areas.
The project, which commenced in July 2021, is one of the municipality’s water augmentation projects, which seeks to ensure that Nelson Mandela Bay does not run out of water.
What went into the groundwater supply project:
With a total of four boreholes constructed, the St George’s Park Wellfield construction work included:
· Construction of a treatment works and discharge pipework
· Construction of a pump station and a pressurized pipeline
· Installation of mechanical, electrical, and electronic equipment
· Installation of a collector pipeline to convey groundwater to a centralized point
· Bulk earthworks and trenching
· Tie into existing NMBM bulk water network, and
· Commissioning of a groundwater monitoring system
During the official opening of the Wellfield, NMBM Deputy Executive Mayor Cllr Mkhuseli Jack, said: “The Municipality is doing all it can to ensure that we maximise all our resources as we continue to face a dire situation of no rainfall. While we continue to do our part, we need all our residents to work with us and play their part. We can not win this battle we are faced with alone. We opened the first boreholes project in November last year, this site is our second one and we still have two more sites we will commission later this year.
“We are really doing our best to make sure that residents and businesses have water supplied to them. We will be receiving an average of 2.1 million litres of water from this site alone. The water is treated and safe to drink. Not only will this site supply the areas that are serviced by the St George’s Park reservoir, but through the constructed pump station the Wellfield will feed other reservoirs connected to the Churchill pipeline.”
As of 14 March 2023, major storage dams supplying the Metro are as follows:
Kouga Dam 13.16 %
Churchill Dam 25.45 %
Impofu Dam 6.91%
Loerie Dam 46.60 %
Groendal Dam 14.63 %
TOTAL 12.77 %.
As the municipality continues to urge residents and businesses to drastically reduce water consumption, drought crisis public meetings commenced from 9 March to 5 April 2023. Residents are encouraged to attend these sessions as Executive Mayor, Cllr Retief Odendaal, his Mayoral Committee members and top Infrastructure and Engineering officials will answer burning questions concerning the drought crisis.
(info from Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality)
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