The City of Cape Town has unveiled a pump station control room to digitally track the live performance of water and sanitation infrastructure.
This, as South Africa's water infrastructure faces a number of challenges, including poor management and maintenance, limited investment and inefficient monitoring systems.
In a statement, the City of Cape Town says over R7.4 million has been invested in this digital hub, with staff actively monitoring 401 sewer pump stations, 58 water pump stations and 60 reservoirs – the vast majority of the infrastructure network.
The newly-opened control room aims to help improve response times for urgent infrastructure repairs by monitoring the telemetry alarm system installed across the sewer and water network to provide digital early warnings.
Furthermore, the system is able to directly SMS response teams when issues arise after hours.
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, together with councillor Zahid Badroodien, mayoral committee member for water and sanitation, yesterday visited the control room.
Hill-Lewis comments: “I was impressed by how digital co-ordination is enabling live monitoring of the water and sewer network. The tracking system is helping to quickly dispatch teams to attend to infrastructure performance issues.
“We are also reducing responses to false alarms by as much as 50% in the first few months of operation, ensuring more efficient use of our teams attending to faults. The most exciting part about these investments is the direct benefit to communities of faster city responses and reduced impact of sewer and water overflows.”
According to the statement, the new control room is part of a suite of interventions to lessen the impact of sewer spills on communities and the environment.
Other interventions include investments in resourcing rapid response teams and fleet, generator and UPS investments to mitigate power failures across the sewer and water network, multiplying sewer pipe replacement to around 100km annually, and doubling water pipe replacement to 50km, as well as proactively jet-cleaning over 200km of sewers annually to mitigate blockages and overflows.
“Overall, the city will invest R5.3 billion in water and sanitation infrastructure for 2024/25 alone, more than double the first budget of the current local government term (R2.3 billion in 2022/23).
“In total, the city will invest R16.5 billion in this category of infrastructure over three years, totalling 41% of Cape Town’s medium-term capital budget. This includes R1 billion in upgrades to sewer pump stations,” concludes Badroodien.
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