City suburbs run dry after pipe bursts

Water Reservoirs, while supplies to other areas are being affected by the continued power outages due to the current annual maintenance work at Kariba Power Station.
Harare city engineers were busy working on the burst pipe yesterday and water had stopped gushing out.
Zesa has also for the second time failed to beat the deadline to complete the mandatory maintenance at Kariba South Power Station.
The work that was supposed to be completed on Sunday last week was pushed to Wednesday but the power utility said it has pushed the deadline to this Sunday.
The power outages have reportedly affected water treatment in Harare while some suburbs have gone for more than three months without water.
Harare City Council yesterday issued a statement notifying residents in southern and northeastern suburbs of the dry spell citing the burst water pipes.
The affected suburbs include Mbare, Sunningdale, Msasa, Hatfield, Waterfalls, Greendale, Mabvuku, Tafara, Graniteside and parts of Workington industrial areas and Harare Hospital.
“There is an emergency repair works on the 1500mm Warren Control-Letombo pumping main that has developed a major burst at Southerton Police Station.
“Water supplies to these areas are going to be affected during the repairs and normal distribution is expected to be restored as soon as the works are completed,” the city said.
City spokesman Mr Lesley Gwindi said the burst pipes were due to the aged water reticulation system.
“Each time we fix a pipe burst another occurs because of pressure. Our pipes are old and in need of replacement. We can not keep up with the pipe bursts,” he said.
Mr Gwindi said funding problems were affecting the smooth delivery of water.
Meanwhile, Zesa spokesperson Mr Fullard Gwasira on Thursday confirmed that the routine exercise would now be finished over the weekend.
“We now expect to complete the exercise over the weekend. The delays have been due to unforeseen issues that came during the work.
“We are, however, certain that the work would be completed this weekend,” he said.
Mr Gwasira said the opening of the floodgates at the Kariba Dam wall by the Zambezi River Authority on Sunday would not affect maintenance work.
“That would not affect the work at all. The only effect of opening the floodgates is a slight reduction in the generation capacity,” Mr Gwasira said.
In a statement, ZRA said the opening of the gates was meant to ensure the dam’s safety due to high inflows into the dam.
“Flows in the Zambezi River have continued to be high since the third week of February 2011 to date. Persistently high inflows into the lake have taken place leading to a rapid rise in the Lake levels and storage,” the ZRA said in a statement.
The organisation said the ongoing Zesa maintenance work had also caused a rapid rise in water inflows.
“The Authority will therefore like to inform the general public that it will be opening one spillway gate on May 15 2011 at 12pm to control the lake level and maintain it below the maximum operating level in order to safeguard the dam.
“One gate fully opened will discharge 1 500 cubic metres per second.
“The general public and the communities living along the Zambezi River Banks are kindly advised to take this notice seriously to avoid loss of life and property due to flooding that might occur after that gate has been opened,” the Authority added.
Kariba Power Station has a capacity to produce 750MW of electricity but 250MW were lost because of the annual shutdown. Zimbabwe is currently producing approximately 1 200MW daily against a demand of 2 200MW.
Zesa imports electricity from neighbouring countries to augment the country’s needs but has had to implement load-shedding to manage demand. The power utility is owed over US$450 million by consumers and has failed to import adequate electricity or invest in new electricity generation plants or spares for existing ones.
The Kariba South Power Plant was shut down at the end of April and was initially scheduled to return to normal operations by May 8.