Press statement for his worship Solomon Mguni the mayor on the Bulawayo water situation held on thursday, 4 june 2020 at 10.30 hours.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for attending this media briefing today on the water situation in Bulawayo.
The current city's water situation is almost a recurrence of the 1992 situation where-in the city experienced a crippling drought that affected the city's raw water storage and supply.
It should be noted that the water act as amended in 1976 provided for central government to be responsible for raw water sources for local authorities. Before the amendment, the city had built five dams taking into consideration future growth and demand.
The dams built by the city of Bulawayo before the amendment of the water act are Lower Ncema (1943) and upper Ncema (1974), Inyankuni (1965), Umzingwane (1956) and Insiza (1975).
With the advent of the 1992 drought, central government through the Zimbabwe national water authority (Zinwa) drilled 77 boreholes at Nyamandlovu to tap into the Nyamandlovu aquifer.
The project was designed with a potential yield of between 20-26 ml/day.
The initial phase was done and completed at rochester with a yield of 10ml/day and the additional yield of 10ml/day was to come from the epping forest.
Further to the Nyamandlovu aquifer, zinwa constructed the Mtshabezi dam from 1994 to 1997 with pipeline from the Mtshabezi dam to Umzingwane being commissioned in 2013.
Mtshabezi dam was designed to supply 20-25ml/day of raw water to the city.
The pipeline is currently delivering on average of 16ml/day due to change of scope at implementation, where two by 400millimeter diameter pipes were installed as opposed to 750millimeter diameter pipes as per design hence the need for the upgrading of the existing pipeline.
The current water situation
Due to climate change the city's dams in the last 3 years, i.e. 2018, 2019 and 2020 have received low inflows thus resulting on the depletion of storage to 28.42% as at 4th June, 2020 with 3 dams decommissioned. The city is currently left with 3 operational dams.
Due to the predictions of another poor rainfall season, the city in November 2019 alerted central government of the potential water crisis and continued to do as the storage in the dams deteriorated. During the month of may 2020, the city further pursued its appeal for Bulawayo to be declared a water shortage area and submitted an urgent request for the implementation of the following urgent projects;
These short term interventions are projects that have remained outstanding since their inception and are the responsibility of ZINWA who are tasked by law to provide raw water to the city.
For the short term to medium term the following projects were proposed;
After submission of these projects, government engaged a consulting engineer to assess Bulawayo’s urgent water needs and they came up with the following:
These proposals were made public before council and ZINWA engineers could review the impact and the proposed figures thereof.
Consultations were then subsequently carried out and the following projects were then agreed on.
The urban water management strategy for Zimbabwe uses a drought mitigation condition called 21 months rule to minimise the effects of future droughts to urban centres.
In summary the rule details that if storage at end of a rainy season is not sufficient to sustain a city to the next rainy season (December (2021)), water shedding should commence immediately.
This is the water demand management strategy that was adopted by the city since February 2019.
The rule also gives adequate time to invest in mitigation projects to lessen the impact during water crisis and in the event that the city does not get adequate inflows in the 2020/21 rainy season.
The recommendations by the consultant while appropriate to alleviate the current crisis only add 29ml/day in terms of additional raw water and projections are that by December 2021 the city will only have 61ml available from Inyankuni and the Nyamandlovu aquifer.
On the other hand the proposals by the city will provide an additional 59ml/day and the available raw water of 97ml/day by the same period from Nyamandlovu, Inyankuni and Mtshabezi.
From the above, while the immediate interventions from central government are welcome, the city recommends that the medium term projects be urgently pursued to improve the city's raw water security in case of another poor rainfall season as it is unlikely that the ultimate solution to Bulawayo’s water challenges the Gwayi/Shangani dam will be in commissioned in the near future.
Council appreciates the improvement on the Nyamandlovu Rochester rehabilitation that has increased delivery from a daily average of 3ml/day to an average of 9ml/day and anticipate that work on the other agreed projects will commence as a matter of urgency.
Conclusion
Residents are encouraged to take note of the times water is available so that they collect adequate water for their domestic use.
Every effort is made to supply the residents with clean safe water at all times. Despite the initial quality of water after treatment, it from time to time gets contaminated during distribution, transportation and storage due to unhygienic storage and handling practices.
Complaints have been received with regards to the water quality as well as diarrhoea cases where water was suspected to be the cause.
Investigations of all such complaints have been carried out and the following are recommended as precautionary measures;
I thank you.
Siyabonga.
