KNYSNA NEWS - Water supply to the Heads suburb in Knysna was fully restored this past Saturday afternoon after three days days without, but although the story had a happy ending, the manner in which the water supply was interrupted did cause concern among some residents.
According to Knysna Heads Association chair Chris Gould, most residents’ taps ran dry on the afternoon of Wednesday 11 October.
Gould said most homes did not have water until late Saturday afternoon, and that the remainder had their water supply restored by late Sunday.
The area where the main problem occurred, he said, was the intersection of Emu Crescent and Eagles Way at the top of the Heads.
During the Knysna-Plett Herald's visit to the site on Monday 16 October, much of the area of the breakage was still dug up.
'Contractor ignored orders'
Gould agreed with Ward 9 councillor Mark Willemse's statement to the Knysna-Plett Herald on Saturday 14 October that the contractor appointed to complete the upgrade to the old water reticulation system caused a fault that resulted in the outage.
"The pipe burst was most likely caused by pressure differences. The old system is quite intricate and the burst was very difficult to reach," Willemse said on Saturday.
According to Gould, the problem with contractor Iviwe Engineering Solutions from East London started two Fridays ago, on 6 October.
"That afternoon the contractor decided to commission a section of the pipe that was not yet ready. Standard practice dictates that no work is done on a Friday because if something should go wrong, residents would be without water for the entire weekend.
"In addition, residents require two days’ notice so that they can make suitable arrangements.
"The resident engineer ordered the contractor not to commission the pipe, but the contractor went ahead.
"Luckily, after a few frantic phone calls to municipal officials, he was stopped," said Gould.
'No notice of water plans'
“Once all preparations had been completed and the engineer was satisfied, that section of pipe was successfully commissioned the following Tuesday," he added.
"The next day the contractor decided to go ahead with commissioning the remaining section of the new pipe, despite being ordered not to proceed by the resident engineer.
"No method statement was filed. No notice to residents was given. No water truck was on hand," Gould explained.
The aftermath of the 'contractor's mistake' according to residents.
“The problems were compounded when efforts to clear around the small reservoir up the hill in the middle of the night caused a pipe there to rupture.
The resulting flood undermined a wall down the hill which then collapsed onto the valves and pipe below.
We were very lucky that the garage above the collapsed wall did not slide down the hill into the street as well. And we were fortunate that no one was hurt.
“I was impressed by the engineers’ and the municipality’s response," Gould said.
"Local contractor B&V was immediately brought in by the municipality. Local wall experts were called in to rebuild the wall and uncover the pipes and valves, which fortunately were not damaged.
"Knysna’s water department manager Rhoydon Parry spent two full days on site and worked well into the night.
"Despite an injured foot, municipal supervisor Dale Meagher was there, and he, Parry, and the resident engineer only got a couple of hours' sleep several nights in a row. Our heartfelt thanks to all of them," said Gould.
Not the first water problem
It is Gould's opinion that the water outage is part of a larger supply chain management problem that the Knysna municipal administration seems unable to address.
"I say this because in the past few months we have seen three projects on the Heads blow up in the municipality's face. It is inconceivable that this is merely a coincidence – it has to reflect a deeper, underlying problem involving contractor selection and, in some cases, contract management," he said.
The first, he said, was a new set of stairs that were built to connect the Coney Glen braai area to the beach, which took much longer than anyone would reasonably expect, and that, ultimately, the stairs are a disaster.
The second, said Gould, was the failure of the request for proposals (RFQ) for the former Senza building.
“The third was the Heads phase 1 water reticulation system upgrade, which began in mid-June, after the fires, and was scheduled to terminate two months later, in mid-August.
"It has taken twice as long and is still not done. To be fair, some of the delay was due to a contractually permissible 15% expansion in the scope of the work," he said, adding that he believes that the municipality lacks accurate records of what is underground, which also slowed things down.
“In American baseball, the rule is, three strikes and the batter is out. For the municipal administration, however, striking out doesn’t seem to have any consequences. They just keep swinging and missing," Gould said.
Gould added that residents are flabbergasted at these examples of what he calls municipal dysfunction, and that they want answers to the following questions:
- Who is in charge of the supply chain management process, and why isn't it working?
- Is the municipality aware of these problems, and what is it doing about them?
- Why are we paying such high rates, and getting such poor service?
Residents, businesses affected
Mandy Cassel, Headlands House owner, said her business was very badly affected by the cut-off and that the incident was an eye-opener to the way things are done in Knysna.
“We had guests from Switzerland that were supposed to book in on Friday, and we kept hoping the matter would be resolved. In the end we had to turn them away and refund their entire three-night stay. It is unbelievable,” she said.
Cassel is only one example of the businesses affected, not to mention residents.
"Residents were unable to shower for three days, or run their washing machines or dishwashers," said Gould.
"I have asked to meet with the municipal manager to discuss these incidents, and the broader problem of the municipality's dysfunctional supply chain management process, and look forward to getting some answers.
"Residents are understandably up in arms," he said.
Bonani Nkonyeni of Iviwe Engineering Solutions said during a telephonic conversation that he believes Knysna-Plett Herald has been given the wrong information regarding his involvement in the water supply interruption and referred the paper to the municipality or site engineer.
This JCB was holding a pipe in place in the area where water supply loss was caused, according to Knysna Heads Association chair Chris Gould. The photo was taken during a site visit by the Knysna-Plett Herald on Monday 16 October.
Municipal response
According to municipal manager Kam Chetty the municipality anticipated that the water supply would be restored to the Heads area by Thursday 12 October.
"However, during this maintenance work [on 11 October] a retaining wall collapsed resulting in the need for extensive repairs and water supply being cut off during this repair period," he said, adding that the municipality did not anticipate or foresee that water supply would be off for four days.
He said the municipality's technical team provided a water truck as a contingency plan and kept the ratepayers association informed until water was restored on the Saturday.
Chetty said that the technical team are still on site, busy with upgrading of the water infrastructure, which would take time "as they work with live systems".
"We apologise for any inconvenience to households and will continue to communicate with the ratepayers association regularly while the team finalises their work."
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