eThekwini Municipality Provides Clean Water and Sanitation Services to 3.6 Million People

CARLSBAD, CA, January 10, 2012 (Press-News.org) The publicly owned entity, formed in 2000, is an amalgamation of 38 municipalities who previously had little or no access to piped water or proper sanitation. Taking this responsibility in its stride, eThekwini Municipality has gone on to receive various certifications and recognitions as it continues to raise the standard of both drinking water and effluent sewage.

eThekwini Municipality recently completed a project to replace 2,000km of asbestos cement water pipes at a price of R2 billion. However, as some of the former municipalities eThekwini incorporated in 2000 kept poor records, Head of Water and Sanitation Neil Macleod knew there was a possibility hazardous piping still existed.

"We used contractors to go and dig up other parts because we weren't sure what they were made of," he notes. "We found another 1,000km of asbestos piping so there is still more to do in this area."

A project to provide toilets for shack settlements is also moving ahead with 300 areas set to benefit from communal facilities by the end of the year. eThekwini has also moved forward with its pressure management projects to reduce static pressures in the city to cut non-revenue water by five percent over the past year, which Macleod says is "starting to pay dividends."

With responsibility for the city's sewage as well, eThekwini Municipality makes sure its health and safety initiatives are far reaching and incredibly thorough. "We have mounted a far more regular sewer cleaning programme on a planned basis with high pressure cleaning and CCTV monitoring. This stops a lot of spillage and improves the state of the water and rivers," reveals Macleod.

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About eThekwini Municipality

One of the 11 districts found in the KwaZulu-Natal province, eThekwini is classed as a Category A metropolitan municipality with exclusive and legislative authority in the area. However, eThekwini Muncipality's main area of business is the provision of water and sanitation services to around 3.6 million people.

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