The City of Cape Town is implementing a bypass of the Da Gama Park water reticulation system in order to avoid constant water outages experienced in the area.
On Monday 18 July Welcome Glen residents were affected with no water for almost 24 hours.
According to resident Gabriele Prince, they had been without water for more than 18 hours with no end in sight.
“Is there any way forward, any plan in how to get us out of this mess?”
Meanwhile on social media, two days later, Natasha Swart also from the Glencairn area, commented that they were without water once again.
“I see there’s no water again here in Glencairn Heights, anyone know the reason?
“This is totally unacceptable to be left without water for almost two days. It’s bad enough we deal with power cuts, but now water cuts on a frequent basis.
“My morale is being badly affected by living in a country I once loved. No wonder we are losing so many South Africans to go live in other countries.”
Ward 61 councillor Simon Liell-Cock said water outages in the area were a frequent occurrence due to aged infrastructure in Da Gama Park.
“As Welcome Glen was originally developed as an extension of the SA Navy’s Da Gama Park housing scheme, the suburb is on the same water reticulation system and, as a result, is affected by the failures in Da Gama Park.
“The water outage in Welcome Glen yesterday (18 July) was due to two bursts of the Mainline in Da Gama Park – one at 14th and one at 16th avenue.”
Liell-Cock added that he was made aware of the water outage and immediately worked on the issue.
“The water outage on Monday 18 July was brought to my attention at 06:50.
“ I immediately contacted the SA Navy facilities officer who was already dealing with it and had called out the Public Works Contractor.
“I was on site when the final repair was completed at 17:30 and the water was switched on.
“Due to the weak state of the reticulation infrastructure in Da Gama Park the air must be ‘bled’ and the system ‘charged’ with great care to prevent further failures.
“Some parts of Welcome Glen did not receive water immediately due to airlocks but the City’s water team were on site and by 22:00 water was restored.”
