Dam levels decline in most provinces
28 April 2017
According to the Department of Water and Sanitation weekly dam report, the National Storage of 211 dams has decreased slightly by 0.3% to 72.9% compared to 73.2 last week. Around the same time last year, the national storage was at 54.6%.
There has been a slight decrease in capacity in all provinces (with the exception on Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West where there has been no change). The current condition of dams is quite worrying as we are moving out of the period for summer rains and at this stage all water from the summer rains will be in our reservoirs and we will see a gradual fall off of flows in our rivers. The Winter rainfall are also of great concern as we have not yet had any significant rain to relieve pressure on the dams in the winter rainfall area.
Provincial levels: Compared to the previous week: Eastern Cape (down 0.3% to 62.2%), Free State (down 0.1% to 85.6%), Gauteng (down 0.3% to 92.2%), KwaZulu-Natal (down 1.2% to 52.8%), Limpopo (steady at 78.6%), Mpumalanga (steady at 79.2%), Northern Cape (down 0.1% to 98.3%), North West (steady at 90.5%), Western Cape (down 0.8% to 21.4%).
On specific examples for dams and systems: