Windhoek
The City of Windhoek needs at least N$450 million over the next three years to upgrade the 54-year old Gammams water care works, which is one of the city’s recharge boreholes.
In an interview with New Era yesterday on the city’s water situation, the City of Windhoek manager for corporate communications, Joshua Amukugo, was reluctant to confirm whether funding has been secured, but said: “By the time we complete the project after three years, N$450 million would have been used.”
Gammams was commissioned in 1961 and has undergone various modifications and alterations throughout the past 54 years of its existence, with the last rehabilitation taking place in 2001.
The entire new upgrade is expected to take approximately three years up to commissioning.
The estimated N$450 million provisional budget for the project, Amukugo revealed, is inclusive of professional fees, actual construction costs and procurement of new equipment.
He said the project would be refurbished in different phases until its completion.
Other city recharge boreholes are the Goreangab reclamation plant and the Von Bach dam.
With the high inflow, Amukugo said, the Windhoek Municipality finds it more and more expensive to treat the water to required standards.
He noted that the upgrading of the plant is therefore not only required from an environmental perspective but would be instrumental in the sustainability of potable water supply to the city.
Amukugo also revealed that the municipality would have a meeting with NamWater today, aimed at assessing the water situation and to map the way forward on how residents should use water sparingly.
Municipal wastewater is treated at Gammams.
He said the plant has a treatment capacity of 26 million litres of water per day, which is needed to meet Windhoek’s water needs. The current average flow is approximately 38 million litres per day with a peak flow of 3 600 cubic metres per hour.
“The plant furthermore supplies the Wingoc reclamation plant with treated water and the quality of this water is subject to extremely strict quality control procedures and parameters,” he said.
The existing plant started operations in 1961 with various modifications and additions throughout the past 54 years.
Of late, some residents have been up in arms that the city does not have enough water, but yet opted to renovate municipal offices while apparently overlooking the water crisis.
On the issue of office accommodation, Amukugo said: “I just need to remind you that a whole lot of municipal divisions and sections are currently renting offices all over the city, with the city (municipality) ending up spending millions of dollars on renting per year, hence a decision to put this approach to an end.”
Regular droughts in Namibia and a continuous shortage of potable water to Windhoek have necessitated the municipality to investigate alternative sources of raw water supply.
The most viable option proved to be reuse of municipal wastewater from the largest sewage treatment plant in Windhoek, which is the Gammams water care works, with augmentation from a surface water source on the outskirts of the city, the Goreangab dam.
The original (now old) Goreangab water reclamation plant was built over 30 years ago to reclaim municipal effluent for potable water purposes.
This plant was upgraded and extended several times during the last 30 years but reached the end of its viable life span in the late 1990s and was also technologically no longer up to date. It was therefore decided to build a new, larger reclamation plant, the new Goreangab water reclamation plant. This plant was put into operation in mid-2002 and produces 21 000 m3 /d of drinking water, safe for human consumption, at all times.