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The Kimberley water shutdown has exposed serious maintenance flaws by Sol Plaatje.

While the weekend’s repairs were largely instituted to stop the flooding of the R31, the fact that Sol Plaatje is not confident that the weekend’s repairs have indeed addressed the root cause of the flooding once again goes to show that there is a lack of required expertise needed to deal with this crisis that has been brewing for almost two decades.

Despite delays since 2004 to investigate the causes of the R31 lake, it is also doubtful as to how thoroughly Sol Plaatje actually investigated the causes and planned remedial action before this weekend’s shutdown for repair work on major pipelines.

This is worrying. A large portion of municipal funding was spent on the weekend’s shutdown. Whether sufficient funding is available to now go on a fact-finding mission to try determine the cause of the R31 flooding, and to institute further major repairs, is questionable.

The effect of this lack of expert knowledge and planning is further exacerbated by an ongoing lack of maintenance of Sol Plaatje’s water and sewerage infrastructure.

The sediment-caked clarifiers at the Riverton Water Purification Plant are a case in point, as was the resultant dirty “purified” water in the dams. The exact same situation occurred last year, after which DA councillor Ockert Fourie expressly called on Sol Plaatje to ensure regular and rotational cleaning of the clarifiers. Clearly, this has not been taking place. As all clarifiers were once again found in an unacceptable condition, that cannot be put down to the flooding alone.

Given that the weekend’s repairs have cost Sol Plaatje a significant amount of money, the concern now is whether there is in fact any additional money available to fully resolve the flooding of the R31.

The DA has requested an urgent MPAC and IDP meeting, where we want all the facts laid on the table. Up until now, Sol Plaatje has not taken councillors into confidence with detailed technical infrastructure reports relating to water and sewerage leaks. It is time that we are transparently informed of all problems, plans, funding and costs in order to be able to hold Sol Plaatje accountable for failing to manage Kimberley’s water and sewerage network .

Issued by Sol Plaatje Municipality representative, Heinrich Pieterse, Cllr