It seems that residents in town will have to get used to having either water or electricity at any given time. The current situation in terms of infrastructure does not seem to allow for both to be provided simultaneously.

The power cut on Sunday, April 13, together with the load shedding on Saturday, resulted in the loss of more than 24 hours of water pumping, both from the Albasini Dam and the boreholes outside of town. The consequence of these power losses was dry taps when reservoirs were depleted.

At present, the reservoirs in town are capable of storing 33 megalitres of water, provided that the supply remains constant. With all the load shedding taking place, this does not happen any more. Consequently, the chance of being left without water, at least some of the time, is very real for water users in town. This is not a pleasant prospect, since water is more essential than electricity in people’s everyday lives.

In last week’s Zoutpansberger, a report was published in which the municipality indicated that water will be supplied from the Nandoni Dam in the foreseeable future. Although this appears to be good news, one has to wonder what the implications are in terms of the existing infrastructure as such a supply will exceed the capability of the current pipe network in place. By all accounts, the current load-carrying capacity of the system amounts to 20 litres per second, while the pipeline from Nandoni will supply roughly 400 litres per second.

Apart from the implications for the water pipe system, the electricity supply needed to do the pumping will amount to about 4 megawatts. This will mean that the current sub-station will be upgraded and added to, just to handle the electricity supply for pumping the water, as well as the existing electricity supply to the surrounding areas. Plans and requests have already been submitted to get the project off the ground. If and when these plans and requests will receive approval remains an open question.

In the meantime, officials from the municipality have indicated that people have to be patient when the electricity has been off for an extended period. When the electricity is switched on after being down for some time, the whole network does not come alive at the same time. It is restored in phases. If people insist on using all their electrical appliances, such as stoves, geysers, televisions and so forth from the moment the supply is restored, the network is unable to cope with the big demand and keeps tripping. This makes the work of the officials very difficult.

On Sunday, after the 10-hour maintenance outage, the municipal officials were unable to restore the network for this very reason and had to go around forcing people to switch off appliances to allow the network to be re-established. The officials in charge have requested residents to refrain from switching on all appliances at once, especially those that use a lot of electricity, such as geysers and stoves. They have indicated, however, that it is understandable that people wish the situation to revert back to "normal" as soon as possible.