The Department of Water and Sanitation in the Northern Cape welcomes the recent rains in the province, however, more rains are needed to break the back of the drought.

The Minister of the Department of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Lindiwe Sisulu has called on all South Africans to intensify their water saving efforts, as dam levels continue to drop week-on-week in many parts of the country.

This is due to extremely hot weather and lack of rain.

The full water storage capacity of the Northern Cape is 147.3 cubic metres. Currently, water storage in the province is 106.2 million m3 or 72.1%.

The Douglas Storage Weir in the Vaal River is 12.064 million m3 or 74.3%. Boegoeberg Dam in the Orange River is 108.4%, Spitskop Dam in the Harts River is at 34.252 million m3 or 59.2% full and the Vaalharts Weir is 37 404 million m3 or 73.8% full.

The water level of the Karee Dam which serves Calvinia, is currently at 11.2%. It should be noted that the Karee Dam is the only storage dam in the Northern Cape. Other dams are used as transient storages and have much smaller capacities than the larger storage dams in other provinces.

Hence the levels of transient dams vary from week to week.

They are fed from other upstream dams in the Vaal and Orange rivers from which water is released from the upstream dams as required.