Water woes continue in Joburg with systems remaining low

With levels still low at most of Johannesburg Water's reservoirs and towers, the utility has appealed to those who have water to use it sparingly. 

“Johannesburg Water is monitoring severely constrained reservoirs and towers, impacted by the recent power failure at Eikenhof pump station. Customers can assist by using water for critical needs only at this time. The sustainability of capacity is dependent on water usage during the course of the day,” Johannesburg Water said in a statement. 

The utility has not indicated when the water supply will be fully restored in affected areas. 

Residents in several parts of Joburg have had to grapple with water outages.

Several areas had no water at the weekend with the problem spreading to other areas on Monday and Tuesday. Many residents l are still without water despite Johannesburg Water confirming that City Power had concluded repairs at the Eikenhof pump station.

“There was no notice, no communication from Johannesburg Water on what the problem is and when we could expect the problem to be resolved. We woke up to no water and had to just carry on as if nothing has happened,” Shirley Hoffman of Helderkruin in Roodepoort told TimesLIVE.

She said they had no water on Monday morning. “I didn’t go to work and my children also missed school. We didn’t have a single drop of water from our taps, so we couldn’t even brush our teeth,” she said.

About 20km away, in Melville, residents had the same problem but they said theirs is a persistent one.

Julia Fish of the Melville Residents’ Association said water woes were common in her area.

“Melville has been significantly impacted by several outages over a sustained period of time. This is the second such extensive outage this summer, however high-lying parts of Melville seem continuously unstable.

“I am of the opinion that the City of Johannesburg's targeted campaign of over-densification of our neighbourhood with no consideration for infrastructure development is to blame. The planning department keeps approving student communes and student housing complexes despite our active objections that our systems cannot support them.

“Blaming citizens for overconsumption when the city is overcrowding is pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Though there are planned upgrades to the Hursthill system, these are already behind where densification has ballooned to in the system area which includes Brixton and Westdene,” Fish told TimesLIVE.

Bridget Steer, councillor for ward 87 which includes Melville, told TimesLIVE she was optimistic the water challenges would soon be a thing of the past. 

“The main issue here is that Melville is growing at a fast rate and that leaves a strain on our reservoirs. This was communicated with the city back in 2011 that the reservoir can no longer meet the demand and there was a need for a new reservoir.”

Steer said a budget had been approved to build a new reservoir and pump station in Brixton in the current financial year. 

Residents in the northern parts of Joburg also complained about a lack of water.

Mpho Moalosi, who lives in Blairgowrie, said what was frustrating to her was the lack of communication from Johannesburg Water.

“Johannesburg Water is not saying anything. There is nothing on their Twitter feed about our outage. The only update they shared on Monday morning didn’t have anything about the water outage in my area.

“The other thing is trying to reach them is a problem. We tried to call them the entire morning without luck,” she said.

No water in our taps — how we got here

Rand Water spokesperson Makenosi Maroo said on Monday afternoon the “water supply challenges” were due to power outages and high water consumption during the recent heatwave.

Rand Water's maximum water treatment capacity at its Zuikerbosch and Vereeniging purification plants is 5,000 megalitres of water a day.

From its water purification works, it pumps purified water to the pump stations at Eikenhof, Mapleton, Palmiet and Zwartkopjes, which pump the water to 59 storage reservoirs from which municipalities receive water to distribute to residents.

The total reservoir storage level on January 8 was 76%. The level declined “significantly” from January 9 due to high water abstraction by municipalities in the reservoirs, said Rand Water.

The situation was worsened by power supply failures that affected Zuikerbosch purification plant and Eikenhof pump station on January 13, the entity said.

“The power outage incident lasted for a period of six hours and affected Zuikerbosch pumping station at its engine room 4, which supplies almost 40% of Rand Water's capacity. This affected pumping to our pump stations that feed water into reservoirs. The power outage at Eikenhof booster station affected the system for a period of three hours, making it impossible to feed water into the reservoirs.”

Investing in generators to cope with load-shedding

Rand Water said its system is “extremely sensitive to any power outage and may take a minimum of four hours to recover after an outage”.

The reservoir storage level had as a result dropped to 63% when the system recovered.

The drop resulted in Rand Water requesting municipalities to reduce consumption to retain water in the reservoirs and ensure the system does not drop to a point of almost impossible recovery. This, however, did not assist, as levels dropped further due to high water abstraction.

Water storage in the reservoirs then stabilised around 30%. However, at this low level the levels of other reservoirs fell to below 15%. When some of Rand Water reservoir levels are below 15%, the municipalities start experiencing inadequate to no supply to high-lying areas.

Rand Water said it continued engaging with customers via meetings and formal letters to request them to monitor water consumption in their areas and “effect the necessary measures” to manage high water consumption during the heatwave.

But then at 4.30am on Sunday, Rand Water's Eikenhof booster station experienced yet another power failure, which affected water pumping from the station.

“This incident caused a further depletion of Rand Water's reservoir levels, leaving some reservoirs at 0% storage level.”

Maroo said Rand Water systems have started stabilising and are pumping at maximum capacity. “Full recovery, however, will be dependent on less frequent power failures” and lower consumption.

To reduce the impact of power outages on its operations, Rand Water said it is completing a generator installation project. However, it cautioned, generator capacity will not cover all Rand Water sites.

“Power outages remain one of the biggest threats to the stability of Rand Water's networks as it affects continuous water supply to municipalities.”

Affected Joburg Water systems on Monday were:

• Honeydew systems: reservoir level is critically low, the tower is stable.
• Parktown 2 reservoir: levels are critically low to empty.
• Helderkruin systems: the reservoir is critically low to empty, the tower levels are critically low.
• Linden systems: Linden reservoir is low, Linden tower is critically low to empty.
• Hursthill reservoirs: both reservoirs are critically low. Customers in higher-lying areas will experience no water/ poor pressure.
• Brixton systems: the outlet of the Brixton reservoir has been isolated to build capacity and sustain supply to the tower, which is also critically low.
• Alexander Park Reservoir: levels remain critically low.
• Eagle Nest reservoir: levels are critically low.
• Crown Gardens systems: the outlet of Crown Gardens reservoir has been isolated due to very low levels. The tower is empty.
• Aeroton systems: the reservoir is low and the tower is empty.
• Quellerina tower: critically low to empty.
• Florida North Tower: critically low to empty.
• Constantia tower: critically low to empty.
• Horison tower: critically low to empty.
• Waterval tower: critically low to empty.

TimesLIVE

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