Cape Town replaces pipes to conserve water

Cape Town has set aside R54,2-million to upgrade the city's 11500 kilometre water network, the municipality said on Tuesday.

It received regular complaints about burst pipes and was working to replace as many pipelines as possible to prevent them, it said in a statement.

In the first six months of the financial year, 21 kilometres of pipe were replaced.

Clive Justus, mayoral committee member for utility services, said the most common reasons for pipe bursts were not age, but ground movement and high internal water pressure.

The city had started installing pressure-reducing valves which would adjust water pressure as it increased. It was also replacing old bitumen-coated fibre cement pipes with a more flexible UPVC pipe, he said.

The first major valve installation was in Khayelitsha 10 years ago with another in Mitchell's Plain in 2008.

There had been several smaller scale pressure management projects in other parts of the city and would continue to be installed where necessary.

"A start needed to be made and this has initially been focused in those areas where water losses have been the highest and where we can best put into practice our water conservation and water management strategy," said Justus.

He said the Khayelitsha scheme was saving an estimated one million litres of water an hour.

Pipe replacements had already decreased the number of bursts from 60 bursts per 100 kilometres a year to 50 bursts. The goal was to bring this down to 20.

Justus said only pipes which had been damaged and no longer functioned properly were being replaced.

Sapa

Posted at 09:30AM Feb 03, 2010 by Editor in Residential  |