The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor
THE water crisis in Bulawayo is set to worsen as the city council has indicated that it will decommission another supply dam by end of this month as water levels continue to dwindle.
The decommissioning is expected to have a water shedding tightening effect on the city. According to a council report, Upper Ncema is set to be decommissioned by 1 October as levels continue to diminish.
“Percentage storage continues to decrease by 1.55 percent from 53.51 percent to 51.96 percent. Total volume was 215 million cubic metres of which the usable volume was 198 million cubic metres. During a similar period, last year, the operational dams contained 252 million cubic metres of water (that is 60.78 percent), which is 8.82 percent more than the current storage,” reads the report.
According to the figures, Upper Ncema, with a carrying capacity of 45 458 500 cubic metres, is now 7.7 percent full and it will be depleted by 1 October, Insiza Mayfair, with a carrying capacity of 173 491 000 cubic metres is 72,8 percent full, with its depletion period set for May 2025.
Bulawayo City Council
Inyankuni, which has a carrying capacity of 80 781 000 cubic metres is 47,3 percent full (depletion period: November 2025) and Mtshabezi, which has a carrying capacity of 51 996 000 cubic metres is pegged at 73,6 percent of its capacity (depletion period: May 2026) while Lower Ncema which has a carrying capacity of 18 237 700 cubic metres is 64,9 percent full with its depletion period set for May 2023.
The local authority decommissioned Umzingwane Dam at the end of last month after the levels reached the below 10 percent capacity level and they couldn’t draw further into the city’s system.
Announcing the decommissioning of Umzingwane Dam, the city’s Town Clerk, Mr Christopher Dube attributed climate change which resulted in low rainfalls for the suppressed water levels in the city’s dams.
Bulawayo Town Clerk Mr Christopher Dube
The city is officially on a 48-hour water shedding schedule which the local authority is struggling to adhere to with some suburbs going for as much as four days without any water.
The local authority recently announced that they were putting in place relief measures like bowsers to high lying areas where water might take longer to be restored against the shedding schedule. The city council also said it was engaging its partners for the construction of more water kiosks in the city.
Bulawayo’s consumption rate has been on an upward trend and is now averaging 155 megalitres a day while maximum available raw water supply was 105 megalitres a day, this therefore meant that there was a gap between demand and supply of 50 megalitres a day.
