A piano key weir dam, part of the Hazelmere Dam, was commissioned in the Mdloti River in KwaZulu- Natal, on Friday.
Speaking on site, Pemmy Majodina, Minister of Water and Sanitation, said the dam is expected to bring relief to eThekwini Metro, iLembe and Kwa-Dakuza municipalities in the North Coast.
The commissioning of the state-of-the-art dam comes after the Department of Water and Sanitation successfully completed a project to raise the dam wall by 7 metres, to increase its capacity of storage and to augment the water supply to areas such as Verulam, Grout ville, Blythedale and Ballito.
Majodina said “the Department of Water and Sanitation upgraded the Hazelmere Dam wall to meet the needs of the increasing population in the North Coast as it is our role to ensure bulk water supply. The concerned municipalities should now roll up their sleeves to ensure that water is directed to households.”
The project scope was to raise the dam wall by 7m (from 86m to 93.00m) and also construct a Piano Key Weir (PKW) onto an existing dam spillway structure, the installation of 83 rock anchors as well as foundation grouting and other minor related works.
The dam has an uncontrolled PKW spillway, to deal with extreme concentration of floods of between 6 and 8 hours for the dam catchment area.
Some technologies also employed included the use of innovative data management, software for real-time monitoring of anchor performance and 3D digital crack meters.
The upgrading of the wall created 187 jobs for locals of which 16 were women and 53 were youth.
The total number of Small Micro Medium
Enterprises (SMME) appointed were 11 of which, 2 were owned by women.
Picture : Supplied