Sol Plaatje Municipality

13/11/2015

the water distribution areas for the weekend. In addition to the list, there will be six mobile water trucks that will cover areas not included in the list. The work is going ahead as planned at water will be cut off from 5pm tomorrow 13th Friday 2015 till the Sunday 15Th November 2015. We apologise for the inconvenience.

28/10/2015

WATER SUPPLY INTERRUPTION NOTICE

The Sol Plaatje Municipality (SPM) will be conducting further work on the two main supply pipelines that deliver water to the city of Kimberley from Riverton Purifications works. This phase will entail the replacement of valves on both the 600mm and the 925mm pipe lines on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th November 2015.

Despite our best efforts not to interrupt supply, we advise that the city will experience an interruption of water supply to the whole city from Friday evening to Sunday morning. Our reserves are at full capacity and we wish to maintain this position for the hot and dry season.

It is expected that the total replacement work will take about 36-40 hours from start to finish. Accordingly we will cease pumping water from Riverton at 5pm on Friday 13th November as well as supply to the city from Newton Reservoir. Work will commence thereafter and will continue till late Saturday night. It is intended to supply water when work is complete.

It is for this reason that we will be asking all the residents to only use water sparingly during the particular weekend. We urge society to use water for essential purposes such as drinking, cooking and personal hygiene etc and to avoid car washing and gardening.

Each house hold is being requested to make adequate provision for the period. On average, we recommend that between 150 litres to 300 litres will be required per family while we would also like to caution everybody on the safety children when storing such quantities. Contingency plans are being drawn up to supply the affected areas with mobile and static water tanks which will be supervised at all times to avoid misuse This process will be managed by the Fire Emergency Services and the public can call the telephone numbers 053 8324211 in this regard.

BACKGROUND TO PROJECT

The Sol Plaatje Municipality (SPM) draws water from the Vaal River that is located 16 kilometres from Kimberley and pumped to Kimberley Newton Reservoir while the areas of Galeshewe and Roodepan is serviced directly from the pipeline.

During the past years our water business has not been operating at optimum levels and that unacceptable levels of water losses have occurred. These water loss problems was also compounded by commercial problems in invoicing and collecting revenue from consumers. The above is resulting in high levels of non-revenue water which was putting financial strain on the municipality. To a large extend we have minimised the commercial losses but now need to fix the technical issues.

FOCUS AREAS

Two areas will be focused on, (a) namely the installation of new valves on the two mainlines at the midlands point. This will enable us to control and manage supply between the two lines. (b) The installation of a bypass link the 450 line and the 650 line near Barkly Rd as well, as related work of zonal metering project. This will improve supply to areas such as Galeshewe, Homelite and Kimdustria. Project leader for the work will be Mr Hennie Harding and Mr Motale Selesho of Sol Plaatje municipality while the work will be by contracted companies.

The official homepage of the Sol Plaatje Municipality

07/08/2015

Load shedding will continue for the next 18 months, Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown said on Thursday, once again appealing to South Africans to save electricity.

Speaking after Eskom's Annual General Meeting in Cape Town, Brown said the decisive interventions over the past year at Eskom that culminated in a new Board being appointed, has had the desired effect at the state-owned company.

She however expressed concern with Eskom's financial On April 15, Brown said South Africa would still have to bear load shedding for the next two years, and expressed the hope that the economy will manage around that.

She said in a statement she was confident that Eskom was turning the corner and had instructed the Board to fill all senior management positions to ensure this consolidation continued.

"It's unacceptable that senior and middle-management positions are staying vacant for too long," she said.

Three of the Eskom senior executives who were suspended on March 11 2015 have since left Eskom.

On March 12, Eskom’s former chairperson Zola Tsotsi placed the four, including former CEO Tshediso Matona, on suspension when he announced an inquiry into the utility and technology and commercial head Matshela Koko.

Matona initially challenged the suspension in the Labour Court, but decided to resign on May 18.

The other executives who parted ways with Eskom were group executive for group capital Dan Marokane, who resigned on June 1, and finance director Tsholofelo Molefe who left the utility on June 25.

Eskom had since announced that all four executives had been cleared of any wrongdoing following an independent inquiry.

She said Eskom's net profit decreased from R7.1bn to R3.6bn and management must take decisive steps to stop this decline.
Similar to other state-owned companies, Eskom must finalise steps to wean the organisation from the support of the fiscus. Eskom must be put on a course where it can live off its balance sheet, she said.sustainability and the reliability of its ageing power plants.

"Although the accelerated maintenance has increased plant capacity from 65% to 75%, I am urging Eskom to continue on this trend and increase this threshold to reach at least 80%," said Brown.

24/07/2015

Residents are kindly informed in advance of a temporary electricity interruption for the Riverton area, for Wednesday, 5th August 2015, from 06h00 to 19h00. This is to enable ESKOM to conduct maintenance at the Riverton Substation. This exercise will affect residents of Riverton and surrounding farms. The Riverton and Langley Resorts will be affected by the non-availability of electricity. We would like to warn residents that at all times, to treat the electricity appliances as “live” because electrical supply can be switched back at any time. Please note that this exercise will not affect our water supply in all areas, we will be able to supply from the Newton Reservoir to areas that usually get supplied directly from the main lines. The municipality would like to apologise for the inconvenience to all the residents, businesses and all those that will be affected.

12/07/2015

The last of the major connection being installed.

12/07/2015

Work completed by our teams:
2 150mm valves nobengula
1 100mm valve Corner ratanang and solly lekgodi
1 150mm valve Corner hercules and central
1 100 mm valve corner of adamant and trommel
1 100 mm valve corner queensway and yente
1 200 mm valve corner George Street and waterloo
2 100 mm valve corner leeuwenhof and nederberg
2 clamps on 900 mm main
1 clamp on 600 mm main

12/07/2015

Based on progress made during night 4 of the 5 mainline sites are completed and 10 of the 16 network points are done ; these are being worked on and we' ll advise on progress; naturally testing still is needed which can only be done once pipes are full...😃

11/07/2015

11/07/2015

Note on the following times for mobile water trucks
11.00 cnr 19th and 24th str
12.30 cnr 3rd and 7th str
16.00 cnr Transvaal Rd and Stadium str
12.30 cnr Main str en Blackbeard str B. Field
14.00 cnr Riverton and Sussex str
10.00 Redwoodstr... Greenpoint
11.00... Cnr Freedom Str en Austen Str B. Field
13.00 - cnr Cross way and Robinsin str
Both pipes empty ready to GO
Tankets all out. Busy to place and filling

07/07/2015

25/06/2015

A planned water shutdown in Kimberley, which was provisionally scheduled to take place next weekend, has been postponed. We have encountered a technical hitch during pre-testing and therefore the two provisional dates, namely next weekend (the 4th and 5th) and the weekend of July 18th and 19th have been shelved. The planned two water shutdowns are being planned for Kimberley in order to allow repairs to be done on the main pipeline from Riverton to the city, as well as the installation of zonal meters.

Once everything has been procured and on site, suggested new dates will be officially confirmed and residents will be duly notified through all available media. Sol Plaatje Management would like to ensure that all systems are in place and everything has been planned accordingly. There is an indication that the necessary spares to do the repair work will be ready next week but we do not want to take a chance in case there are some delays. The month of July has been chosen because of the low water consumption in the winter months as well as the fact that it is school holidays so disruptions will be minimal. We would like to give the assurance that everything is being done for a seamless ex*****on of the repairs and installations.

24/06/2015

Energy grid will suffer total collapse soon

"I believe that the probability of a grid meltdown is more than 50%," he told a National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) panel at a public hearing in Johannesburg on Eskom's application for a further hike in tariffs.

"A total grid collapse is what we don't want to face because it will take you anything between a week and two weeks to recover, and I'm not even talking about the mayhem that will occur in the meantime."

He said this was a topic that had been treated quietly until last Wednesday, where Eskom said there was a zero possibility of a grid collapse.

Blom then gave the rundown of his reasoning.

"According to my estimate, the weekend or overnight demand is around about 22 GW (gigawatts)... I might be wrong by a couple of gigawatts, I am not too worried about that.

"The peak demand is 35.5 GW as we are told by Eskom - the winter demand," he said.

"These are the numbers that only came out in the last week from the "war room" ... that the serviced, or what you and I know as roadworthy generator sets are roughly 40% of the fleet. Fair condition, 12% of the fleet. Poor condition, 21% of the fleet, critical condition, 26% of the fleet."

'The balance is poor and critical '

Blom said that if you add up the fair and roadworthy sets, you would get around 20 GW.

"So you have 20 GW... the balance is poor and critical," he said.

"The normal safety margin around the world is 15%, that is roughly 6.5 GW.

"Eskom's new winter strategy, they told us proudly last week, will only have a 1 000 MW safety margin, and it is roughly 2.5% of what is considered an appropriate safety margin.

"So according to that, and I am willing to challenge anybody... I am forecasting that there is a better than 50% probability of a total grid collapse."

Blom also ran through Eskom's "state of health", where he illustrated various shortfalls Eskom was suffering, including coal, water and maintenance .

"I don't think it will survive five years in its current state... you decide that for yourself," he said.

"I think it is patently clear that this Eskom is not sustainable, a fact that auditors should have whistle-blown on years ago, and I wonder why they haven't... maybe they don't want to lose the audit contract."

He also said Eskom must not get its request for its hike.

The parastatal is applying for a 24.78% increase. It had already received a 12.6% increase, which would make up part of the 24.78%.

"As far as I am concerned, there is no legal basis for the re-opener [the application for the higher tariffs]."

News24