GEORGE NEWS - George Municipality manages and maintains a water and sewer infrastructure consisting of 116 sewer pump stations and 28 water pump stations. 

Ongoing load shedding implemented by Eskom over the past few years has raised concerns about maintaining the supply of potable water and sewer services.

"The public often forget that during load shedding the municipal sewer pump stations and water treatment works are put under immense pressure and traditional storage capacities are not adequate to compensate for extended load shedding," said municipal spokesperson Chantèl Edwards. 

"In a bid to ensure the provision of adequate potable (drinking) water and to reduce water pollution, 13 large-scale generators have been installed at our most critical installations, including high-risk identified sewer pump stations as well as at the Old and New Water Treatment Works that treat raw water received from the Garden Route Dam into potable (drinking) water."

She said the tender processes for the purchase and installation of two 1 100kVA generators at the Garden Route Dam raw water pump station have recently closed and are being evaluated. 

This installation will mean that during load shedding or any other power outage, raw water can still be pumped to the water treatment works to be processed for drinking water supply.

Mayor Leon van Wyk said these generators need to be constantly refuelled with diesel as the municipality attempts to keep operations going while Eskom is unable to provide electricity for as much as eight hours per day. 

"I was recently privileged to attend an energy summit where the Eskom CEO, André de Ruyter, spoke about the power station fleet that had been operated at maximum capacity for too long. This means that maintenance needs to be undertaken to avoid complete breakdowns. New generating capacity will have to be built over the next 15 years," said Van Wyk.

The purchase and installation costs of such large-scale generators are high, and the generators are not just ordered off the shelf. To date, the municipality has installed generators at our sewer pump stations at a cost of approximately R13-million. 

The generators are diesel operated and have weather and vandal-proof covers. All of the backup generation is equipped with anti-vandalism and anti-theft devices and each is linked to the municipal telemetry and Scada system for remote monitoring.

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