With a sip from a polystyrene cup, filled with water from the newly completed St George’s Park Wellfield Project, municipal water and sanitation senior director Barry Martin smacked his lips and said there was no need for further speeches.
“This is what we came to show you. This facility now provides clean, potable water,” he said with a smile.
The R46m project, comprising four boreholes, a water treatment facility and a pump station to pump excess water to other areas in need, has been feeding water to the city’s central and coastal suburbs for the past three weeks.
At the official launch of the wellfield on Tuesday, Martin said the exercise of looking at groundwater to augment Nelson Mandela Bay’s capacity started 13 years ago, but the last eight years of drought had expedited the process as water became a scarcer commodity.
With the Moregrove and St George’s Park wellfields operational, and the Bushy Park and Coegakop projects due to be completed by the end of April, the four major groundwater projects should be feeding 27 megalitres of water into the Bay’s system daily.
St George’s Park comprises about 3ML of that total and pumps water into the 8.8ML reservoir under the nearby Prince Alfred’s Guard Memorial.
That water will supply parts of Central, Humewood and South End, as well as the harbour and surrounds.
When the reservoir is full, the excess will be pumped into the Churchill pipeline to augment supply to other parts of the city.
Though the boreholes and pump station were completed some time ago, the last piece of the puzzle at the St George’s Park wellfield — the water cleaning and processing plant — was unveiled on Tuesday.
According to project engineer Matthew Hills, water from the boreholes runs through a series of filters to remove iron, copper and other minerals, before it is disinfected to kill harmful bacteria.
Chlorine gas is then added to the water to ensure it stays clean while it travels through the Bay’s pipe system to the end users.
No water is wasted, and any backwash from the filtration process is stored and used for irrigation at parks and verges across the city.
Shortly before cutting the ribbon to officially open the processing plant, deputy mayor Khusta Jack renewed the municipality’s call on residents to use water sparingly, saying tougher times lay ahead should people continue to extract more than the system had to offer.
On Tuesday, the combined available water in Nelson Mandela Bay dams was at 7.38%.
“If we continue to use water the way we have in recent weeks, we are looking for trouble.
“For now, we are still asking to keep it at 50l per person daily.
“But that picture could change quickly and drastically if we are not careful,” Jack said.
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