No water for tower
Progress on the 25m tower reservoir at Thornhill, but no clarity on where resource will come from
The new R33m water tower being built at Thornhill has no water source to fill it.
Talk of the Town looked into the issue after receiving a tip-off that the tower was being built based on a contract for a water source that was cancelled, predating the new seawater reverse osmosis plant (SWRO) presently under construction, and even pre-dating the Amatola Water Quick Wins projects.
We approached Ndlambe Municipality and the company building the tower for answers.
One of the largest water reservoir towers in the Eastern Cape, the 25m tower breaks the skyline and overlooks Thornhill, Nemato and Station Hill.
Once complete, the 2.5Ml concrete reservoir is intended to gravity-feed potable water to the Nemato and Thornhill areas.
However, it will stand empty until Ndlambe sources water to fill it.
In the meantime, construction of the tower is proceeding at pace and, despite the Covid-19 pandemic and unanticipated high winds, the tower should be completed in July this year following the granting of allowable extensions to the contract.
“We had help from 43 Air School as they measure windspeed on a continuous basis.
“Once complete, the project will be one of the largest concrete tower reservoirs in the Eastern Cape,” said Donald Davies, construction manager for Mamlambo Construction, the contractor responsible for building the tower.
Davis also acknowledged that the province had been of great assistance in keeping the project moving during the pandemic.
Davis was asked where the water to fill the reservoir came from.
“That could be a problem,” was Davis’s honest answer.
“Our responsibility is to build the reservoir. The source of the water is for others to determine.
“Our focus is in pumping 2.5Ml of water 25m into the air to keep the reservoir full.”
Davis said to achieve this it would require the water treatment plant to be operational 24/7.
For more than 10 years the municipality and the province have considered different schemes to provide potable water to Port Alfred, but all have ultimately failed.
From the Albany Regional Water Supply Scheme, which envisioned sourcing water from the Gariep Dam, the Amatola Water Bulk Water Scheme and its Quick Wins projects, including the brackish water RO plant outside Nemato which has been left incomplete and unused for the past five years, to the recent debacle over QFS and its RO plant projects, none have yet provided much-needed water to the area.
Municipal spokesperson Cecil Mbolekwa did not directly address the present lack of water to supply the tower, but said: “There has been a lot of planning that took place before the reservoir was built, looking at future development.
“The municipality has available sources of water like Sarel Howard Dam, central belt boreholes and East bank dunes.
“Once the RO plant is complete, that will assist in providing water to this tower.
“The intention of the project is to store more water [as] currently the existing elevated tower is too small to feed the Thornhill area.
“QFS has been paid for the work done and is currently working on site.”
Port Alfred’s water demand is 6.6 Ml/day and during peak seasons it is 8 Ml/day.
The Sarel Hayward Dam is however, currently empty.
He also said the Amatola brackish water RO plant would yield 6Ml/day once completed.
The two-phase RO plant being constructed by QFS would also yield about 5Ml/ day once completed. But questions remain over the 3Ml component which will treat sewage water.
He said all these sources could provide 23.736Ml/day – enough to also supply Bathurst.