Concern about toll of stage 6 blackouts on water, sewerage infrastructure

The performance of critical infrastructure such as municipal water and sewerage systems is being closely monitored in the Western Cape after the abrupt escalation of countrywide loadshedding to stage 6.

Local government, environmental affairs and development planning MEC Anton Bredell on Wednesday described the heightened level of power cuts as concerning.

“Previous experience has shown that municipal water and sewerage systems struggle with extended loadshedding above stage 4, so this is of concern for us,” he said.

“We are urging people to save electricity wherever they can, and to plan with the above reality in mind.” However, he said contingency plans were in place and the provincial disaster management centre was on standby should the need arise.

The Steenbras Hydro Pumped Station was being used by the City of Cape Town to generate spare electricity capacity “to protect critical infrastructure. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to generate spare capacity at the highest stages of load-shedding.”

The city said its “first priority is to manage traffic flow during the afternoon peak hours, through point duty at major intersections affected by loadshedding”.

Provincial disaster management centre chief director Colin Deiner urged residents to ensure they were adequately prepared.

“People should prepare adequately for load-shedding during hours of darkness. Please ensure that chronic medication is easily accessible, families with small children must ensure they have backup resources, and people must ensure that, where they have home security systems that are reliant on electricity, that they have other backups in place.

“People must also ensure that their household appliances are secured against sudden power failures and surges,” said Deiner.

Though most water treatment and wastewater treatment plants have backup generators, prolonged rounds of load-shedding negatively affect their performance, and can result in low water pressure in high lying areas.

TimesLIVE