Heritage Cases

The Ugu District Municipality (UDM) (the “Applicant”) has proposed the development of a new pipeline of approximately 3.4 km from the St. Helen’s Rock abstraction works to the Bhobhoyi Water Treatment Works (WTW) near Port Shepstone, in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) (the “Project”). The Umzimkhulu Regional Water Supply Scheme is part of the KZN Lower South Coast Water Supply System. Water is currently sourced from licenced river flows in the Umzimkhulu River to extract 108 Ml/d from where it is then treated and distributed to all users in the system. Raw water abstraction takes place at the St Helen’s Rock abstraction point where river water is pumped to an off-channel storage dam that feeds Bhobhoyi WTW. There is currently only one functioning ND700/600 pipeline delivering water to the storage dam and Bhobhoyi WTW that was built in the 2000’s, which has limited capacity on its own and which requires complete system shutdown for ongoing maintenance. In addition, there is extreme risk to the system with only one pipeline feeding the Bhobhoyi WTW. To achieve the licenced 88 Ml/d on average, the whole system requires the capacity to deliver up to 108 M/d (peak) at times in order to maintain this average. The existing ND700/600 pipeline from the St. Helen’s Rock abstraction works to the existing Bhobhoyi WTW on its own cannot do this. The existing ND700/600 and proposed ND700 will therefore need to accommodate a combined flow of 1.25 m3 /s at a maximum mean velocity of 1.87 m/s. The proposed new abstraction weir (separate Application for Environmental Authorisation to be submitted to DEDTEA) and delivery pipeline to the WTW will resolve all the above issues and will have the strength and assured capacity to deliver 88 Ml/d average (108 Ml/d peak) to the 900 Ml storage dam and to the WTW, as per the abstraction license.