Bulawayo dams remain in critical levels

BULAWAYO'S supply dam water levels remain in the red despite the few rains experienced recently amid revelations that the city might resort to the dreaded water-shedding exercise, Sunday News can reveal. The city has been forced to officially decommission one of its supply dams while it is no longer drawing water from Mtshabezi Dam due to a pipe burst along the Mtshabezi-Umzingwane pipeline.

The local authority recently stopped drawing water from two supply dams — Upper Ncema and Umzingwane — after they reached critical levels.
According to a council report, the city is currently operating with five out of six supply dams, after Upper Ncema which is only 2,74 percent full was decommissioned. Umzingwane dam is also at critical levels at 11,42 percent.

Overally the city's supply dams are now 43,52 percent full compared to last month's 46,11 percent and last year when they were 70,96 percent full.
Lower Ncema is 65,12 percent full compared to last month's 71,31 percent. Mtshabezi — which the Zimbabwe National Water Authority is yet to address the burst along its pipeline — has the highest capacity at 74,03 percent but this is also a considerable decline from last month's capacity of 76,15 percent and also falls short of last year's figure when it was 99,49 percent full during the same period.

Insiza Mayfair Dam is 62,67 percent full down from last month's 65,83 percent, of which last year during the same period it was 94,07 percent full. While Inyankuni dam is 18,72 percent full down from 21,03 percent while last year it was 29,39 percent full.

So critical is the situation such that only two of the supply dams — Umzingwane and Inyankuni — received trivial inflows during the week. They each received just four millimetres of rainfall during the week.

Last month only Umzingwane and Upper Ncema received inflows with Umzingwane getting 24,8 cubic metres of water while Upper Ncema got 43,68 cubic metres.
Bulawayo City Council senior public relations officer Mrs Nesisa Mpofu, however, said residents need not panic as the local authority was still assessing the rainfall patterns.

"What I must emphasise is that people should use the little water that we have carefully so that we don't reach critical levels. As a local authority we will continue carefully assessing what we have and when we reach serious red levels we will then prescribe what route to take.

"As for water-shedding, we will meet at as a local authority to see where we stand after that we can then make the necessary resolution. For now we call on our residents to keep on praying that the skies open up and we receive significant rain," said Mrs Mpofu.

The city introduced the water rationing exercise in July 2012 in a bid to conserve the limited supplies in the city's supply dams. The Mtshabezi–Umzingwane pipeline link project was viewed as a short-term solution to the city's perennial water problems together with the drilling of new boreholes at Epping Forest.

The long-term solution to the city's water problems is considered as the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project (MZWP).

The Ministry of Water, Climate and Environment recently announced that the city will soon be constructing a new dam at Glassblock in Matabeleland South, which is expected to cost an estimated $208 million.