Tracey-Anne Drew, Constantia
Just to put things into context, I am a “greenie” by nature and an environmental consultant by trade. I totally agree we shouldn’t be wasting water and agree that conservation is the key but I cannot believe we are going to level three water restrictions.
In my road over the past year there have been three burst water pipes where we have lost thousands of litres of drinking water and the council has taken too long to fix them. In one instance so much water was leaking that the residents of our road collected buckets of water to water their gardens. The council came after 7pm to fix the leak which was reported in the early afternoon. My personal water bill went up by thousands of rands; this was an actual reading and when we checked the water main, water was gushing out of my meter (on both pre-meter and post-meter sides). When I called the council on the Friday evening at 6pm they said they would attend to it immediately, the council eventually sent someone around at 11.15am on Sunday morning.
The biggest problem I have is that the person who did the “actual” meter reading should be held accountable as clearly this was not reported and the meter was simply read (which I don’t know how it was done as the water was gushing out). My husband and I conserve water and collect water from our showers to water the garden and yet the council is wasting thousands in taking hours (or days) in fixing leaks and no one is held accountable.
I think the City needs to sort out its leaks as we can conserve as much as we like on a household level and will never be able to compete with the waste the council is allowing and charging us for their mistakes.
