An appeal has gone out to Kouga residents and visitors to reduce their water usage to 60 litres per person per day.
Kouga Executive Mayor Elza van Lingen said dam levels remained critical despite the recent rain and that the area could face serious water shortages over the summer months.
“The only way to make sure that we don’t run out of water is for everyone – be it the municipality, residents, business or visitors – to play their part and make sure that every drop counts,” she said.
“We would also like to appeal to parents to encourage their children to be water wise.”
She said the Kouga Council adopted an emergency plan for drought-relief disaster measures on 31 August. The plan follows on Council’s declaration of a local state of disaster on 31 May due to the drought and pending water shortages.
Steep Part C “emergency” tariffs have been in effect since the beginning of August while water restrictions were introduced in December 2016.
Mayor Van Lingen said the emergency action plan included an awareness campaign through the media as well as community and school outreaches.
“Reducing water losses through the repair of leaks is also an essential part of the plan.
“We will be pooling Council resources to fast-track the turnaround time for repairing water breaks and leaks,” she said.
She said emergency measures would include helping indigent households to identify and repair leaks, checking school ablution facilities for water wastage, investigating the top 10 water accounts per ward, undertaking a thermal inspection of bulk water lines for possible non-visible leaks and auditing valves and hydrants for leaks.
The plan further proposes several short to medium term measures to increase Kouga’s water supply.
“There is an existing borehole north of the N2 which we would like to connect to the Jeffreys Bay Water Treatment works,” Van Lingen said.
“We are further looking at using surface water north of Kruisfontein at Humansdorp to augment the supply. The potential for new boreholes at Hankey, Oyster Bay, St Francis Bay and Jeffreys Bay will also be explored.”