Goreangab water still not ready for consumption

NGHINOMENWA ERASTUSA MONTH after closure due to oil contamination, the City of Windhoek says the reclamation plant at Goreangab Dam has resumed operations, although the water is still not fit for consumption.

City spokesperson Lydia Amutenya last week told that operations at the plant, which accounts for 25% of the city’s water supply, resumed on 22 February.

The Windhoek Goreangab Operating company (Wingoc) that runs the water reclamation plant, was temporarily shut down after an oil spill at Namibia Dairies flowed to the Goreangab Dam and Gammams waste water treatment plant. The city still relies on NamWater to supply the daily 18 000 cubic metres, which were normally supplied by Wingoc.

According to Amutenya, the Gammams plant is now fully operational, although it took longer than anticipated. However, she warned that the purified water was still not ready for human consumption, and was diverted to the Otjomuise plant for further monitoring.

She added that this is done as a precaution, and to ensure that the Gammams plant is wholly flushed out of any possible oil residue.

“The water in maturation ponds at Gammams is also being sampled on a daily basis, and once it returns to the normal standard as required by Wingoc purification conditions, it will be ready for consumption,” Amutenya explained.

This comes amid a water crisis being experienced in the city, as dam levels forced the city to declare mandatory water-saving measures through the imposition of domestic times of limited water availability tariffs.

Amutenya indicated that the city will pay the contractors cleaning up the dam and the wastewater plants.

However, the new costs associated with the cleaning of the affected infrastructure and rehabilitation of the environment are still an enigma to the city, despite the earlier estimates that it will cost around N$30 million, she pointed out.

On the law stipulating that the polluter should pay, the city still could not say if Namibia Dairies will pay for cleaning the environmental damage or not.

Asked if the reopening of the Goreangab reclamation plant will ease the water crisis currently being experienced by the city, the municipality’s manager of communications, Harold Akwenye, said: “Unfortunately, it will not”.

He explained that Wingoc resuming production would not solve the current water situation due to the low level of water in the Swakkoppoort, Von Bach and Omatako dams, Windhoek’s main supply dams. The three dams also supply Okahandja, Gobabis, Karibib and customers along the pipeline at Brakwater.

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