McGregor Now
AN AESTHETICS COMMITTEE has been commissioned by the local
council to vet building plans. They have drawn up a series of
guidelines for building in McGregor in order to try to maintain
and perpetuate the historic building styles of the village.
Anyone planning to build must
obtain a copy of the "McGregor
Planning and Conservation Building Guidelines" from the
Municipality. These guidelines have been drawn up in conjunction
with an experienced conservation architect and it is hoped that
newcomers to the community will make it their business to help
to conserve the McGregor image in the long term interests of
the village.
The village gets its water straight from the natural source
up in the mountains and a comprehensive Water Study by M.B.B.
Consulting Engineers, in conjunction with the Ministry of Water
Affairs and Forestry, has recently been completed. Rivers are
being cleared of alien vegetation and facilities upgraded and
once this project is completed McGregor should have an adequate
water supply for the next twenty years.
Most of the properties in McGregor receive water, for irrigation
purposes, by means of open cement channels and the term for
this (lei water) comes from the old days when orchards were
irrigated by furrows. This water is over and above the normal
household supply. Each erf (plot) is allocated a specific time
during the week which allows the owners to divert water onto
their land or into their dams by means of sluice gates. Woe
betide anyone who steals their neighbour's water!
The majority of the citizens in McGregor are underprivileged
and there has been a constant housing shortage and lack of a
suitable sewage system. After many years of frustration, the
first batch of subsidised low-cost houses has been completed
and a second project is ready to commence. Good news is that
all the new houses and almost all the old dwellings at the bottom
end of the village are now connected to a waterborne sewage
system which does away with the archaic bucket system of the
past. Houses higher up in the village all make use of conservancy
tanks which are serviced by the Municipality's "honeysucker".
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