When things go wrong, those responsible often put their hands in the air and say: “It wasn’t me!” When things go right, everyone wants to take the credit. So it is with Knysna’s water crisis, and it’s making one man mad.
“There is no one person or one political party that can take credit for this. Things are coming right with the water crisis because of collaboration between National, Provincial and Local governments, with private engineers, technicians, consultants, and also some residents’ organisations, so all those videos and social media stuff claiming it was because of one political party is just plain bullsh…t!” You may have guessed who this straight-talker is: Eugene Vermaak, founder and chair of the residents’ organisation Knysna Infrastructure Group (KIG). Eugene sits on the Joint Operations Committee (JOC) established to deal with the water crisis. It seems that things are certainly looking up. For a start we’ve had rain every month. Noetzie has had 49mm in April so far. More importantly, the water infrastructure that the municipality has failed to maintain over many, many years, is finally being sorted out, particularly the pump stations. Knysna relies on water pumped from rivers, so if the pumps don’t work, there is no water. You don’t have to be an engineer to understand that, so how come the municipal officials failed to do maintenance and repairs? I am very glad to see that there is an inter-governmental analysis of the root cause of Knysna’s water crisis, and once this has been completed, there will be “consequences”. Good. Eugene explains that it’s been a long process to get the pump stations working properly. “A huge amount of work was done by private engineers who were brought on board to do a full assessment of all the pump stations, and then draw up technical specifications of what is needed to get them up to the specs of the original design.” There are two new pumps for the Charlesford pump station on the Knysna River, and the one in current use will be taken out, serviced and repaired. Acting Municipal Manager Dr Richard Martin said the Charlesford pump station should be completed by mid-May, and the Glebe station by the end of the month. “This means that water supply should be sufficient to supply the daily demand for Knysna, and to build up reserves in the Akkerskloof dam,” he said. The national Department of Water and Sanitation, which gave R20m to Knysna to develop underground water supplies, is close to finalising a business plan to drill and equip a series of boreholes. Dr Martin said this would give added water to Sedgefield, Buffalo Bay and Knysna. Provincial government has deployed two engineers to Knysna and two technicians. Eugene says the water crisis has been frustrating for residents, but the spin-off is that it has unlocked money and expertise to repair and upgrade the entire water system, as well as drilling for underground water, all of which was desperately needed. “I’ve said it before, people will look back on this water crisis and say: ‘Thank God it happened because now we have our water supply working properly’.”
