City Power targets trees to curb outages in Joburg suburbs

City Power said it will embark on a three-week programme to patrol and clear electricity line servitudes of any encroaching objects, which have been blamed for the frequent power outages experienced in the Greenstone area, northeast of Johannesburg.

In a statement, the City of Johannesburg said the MMC for environment and infrastructure services department (EISD), Mpho Moerane, paid a visit to City Power’s Sebenza and Westfield substations in Edenvale and Modderfontein in Kempton Park on Thursday, on a fact-finding mission to get to the bottom of what caused the outages.

“The investigation found that, while most of the outages were due to vandalism and cable theft, a worrying number were due to faults on the overhead lines caused by encroaching objects, including trees and buildings,” the city said in a statement.

The city said at least 25 outages had been recorded since the beginning of January from the Westfield substation, which supplies the north-eastern parts of the city, with the most recent happening on Sunday, April 11.

The city said an investigation, which started early this year, found that most of the trees interfering with power transmission lines were in private homes, especially around Senderwood, Sandringham, Bedfordview, Sandton, and Morningside, where access was often denied. It also said some houses were found to have been built under the transmission lines in areas including Alexandra and Morningside in Sandton.

“There shouldn't be any excuses about what needs to happen after this. I have directed the CEO to embark on a three-week programme to ensure that the servitudes are cleared.

“We also need to be clear and tough on those who refuse us access to cut trees in their yards. We will use the law where needs be. No-one is allowed to build a structure or plant trees under the power lines. It's not only dangerous but as seen recently, it poses a huge risk to our network, leading to frequent outages,” Moerane said.

City Power CEO Mongezi Ntsokolo said: “As a new CEO I am going to prioritise this and ensure that we address it once and for all. I have ordered my team to do a blanket programme to clear all the servitudes, starting with this one affecting Greenstone. We will also review our SLA (service agreement) with City Parks to tighten it, so that there are frequent monitoring and clearing of the servitudes. We humbly urge the community to co-operate with our teams in the next three weeks.” 

The CEO also extended his apology to the residents of Greenstone and surrounding areas affected by the recent outages.

City Power said it will also increase security patrols in the area, and said it had requested JMPD and SAPS to assist, but said a long-term solution to security around their infrastructure will be centred on business and residential customers taking ownership of their infrastructure and contributing resources to Community Policing Forums and private neighbourhood watch.

The power utility said it would intensify awareness campaigns to educate communities against the dangers of building under the servitudes.