By HELEN HOLLEMAN
“I want to show you a big water leak,” said Masixole Gagayi.
We drove from his house north of Extension 6 towards the Mayfield sewage works and walked up a hill to an astonishing sight: clear, fresh water pouring out of four holes in a huge concrete, bunker-like structure. In eThembeni informal settlement, where Masixole lives, the only water comes from standpipes in the streets.
“Can we build a windmill?” he asked.
Tempting thought, but reporting it to the Municipality was top priority.
The concrete ‘bunker’ – a large valve chamber for managing the supply – forms part of the pipeline from the Botha’s Hill reservoir to the reservoirs that feed the town. An on-the-spot estimate (later checked more accurately) by a water engineer gave an amount of three litres per second from one of the holes; four such holes meant an estimated loss of 12 litres per second. Calculated out, this comes to a loss of more than one million litres per day in a town wh