Mayor of Cape Town, Geordin Hill-Lewis, has expressed his apologies for water outages in parts of the city.
Also read: Planned water supply maintenance in Claremont and Newlands this week
This comes after a compromised sewer pipe was discovered over the water line in Ward 71, where residents have been experiencing a water outage for several days.
According to the City of Cape Town, the outage was caused by a burst pipe on 2 December. Initial reports indicated that a private contractor inadvertently compromised the integrity of the main water pipe from the Wynberg Reservoir down south, which affects the majority of Ward 71, particularly those residing in Tokai and Klein Constantia.
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As per the City, the 500mm diameter main water supply pipeline was shut off at 4pm, and excavations to uncover the 300mm diameter water main in the Green Belt in Constantia.
CoCT worked throughout the night to remedy the situation but water is yet to be restored to the area.
However, taking to facebook earlier this morning, Hill-Lewis said that he had been made aware of a second pipe that had burst in the area earlier this week adding that he completely understood resident’s frustarations.
‘In the last year we have quadrupled our pipe replacement budget and target from 25km per year to 100km of replaced pipeline per year, precisely to try to get ahead of the curve of pipe bursts,’ he posted. ‘We will achieve this target every year, and I am confident that this will start to make a real difference in time.’
‘I have spoken with our local area manager for your area who is on site right now and am told our teams are working and will work through the night to get this repaired and minimise inconvenience, although that is probably cold comfort right now.’
‘Please accept my apologies for this experience, and my assurance that we are doing all we can both right now to fix the present problem, and over the longer term to improve the age of our underground infrastructure.’
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