Dams decommissioned

The city, which has five major supply dams, has already decommissioned Upper Ncema and Umzingwane dams. The council hinted that the city’s residents might only have access to water once a week by Christmas if water from Mtshabezi Dam did not reach the city by then.

“The city’s water crisis is now a disaster. We want the government to declare Bulawayo a critical water shortage area. Very soon we will only be left with one supply dam,” said the Mayor of Bulawayo, Thaba Moyo, in an interview with The Zimbabwean.

The mayor said the council would convene an emergency donors’ conference to raise the $82 million, which is urgently required to fund the city’s mid-term water solutions.

Some of the emergency responses the council has planned include the duplication of Insiza dam, the rehabilitation of boreholes at the Nyamandlovu Aquifer and the recycling of water for industrial and urban agricultural purposes.

The council has already introduced a weekly four-day water shedding schedule.

The MDC-T Policy Director and Bulawayo South Member of Parliament, Eddie Cross, said this year the city’s five supply dams had experienced their worst performance in 10 years as they had received a combined inflow of about one percent of their capacity.

“We can no longer rely on rains alone. Rainfall levels have decreased and the population has gone up, which is a recipe for disaster,” said Cross.

If the two dams are decommissioned, the city will now be relying on Insiza Dam and boreholes at Nyamandlovu Aquifer.

The Mtshabezi Dam project, viewed as a short-term solution to the city’s water problems, has missed numerous completion deadlines and residents are skeptical about relying on it.