‘We are working to get water into problematic Randburg reservoirs’ — City of Joburg

Johannesburg Water systems affected by the outage at Rand Water's Eikenhof pump station on Sunday are recovering, the city says, while acknowledging Linden and Blairgowrie in Randburg are problematic. 

The entity's acting GM of operations, Logan Munsamy, City of Johannesburg mayor Kabelo Gwamanda, city manager Floyd Brink and City Power group executive: operations and maintenance Charles Tlouane addressed the media on Friday about the water crisis. 

Munsamy said the systems are showing signs of recovery and they have reconfigured systems, throttled outlets and done interventions to ensure the maximum flows into reservoirs. 

The systems affected included Randburg, Roodepoort, Soweto, Johannesburg Central and South. He said Linden and Blairgowrie were the two sites of concern in the Randburg area. 

“They are interconnected and are at the highest point of the supply zone. Typical of what happens in the water distribution network, sites situated in the highest point zone are the last to receive water.

“They are the first to experience poor pressure when there is a lack of supply. We are reconfiguring our systems to allow more volumes of flow in those reservoirs,” he said. 

He said their teams were operating valves to bring more water with the additional 100 megalitres provided by Rand Water into the system.

“We normally recover our system more efficiently over the night than during the day. We intend to recover that system a bit tonight and over the coming days,” he said. 

Brink said Johannesburg Water has noted improvements in most systems and to aid in the recovery process of reservoirs and towers, Rand Water is pumping an additional 100 megalitres which is contributing to improvements in affected systems.

“This is because our systems are interconnected and flexible to augment and support one another in the recovery of all systems.

“The following are systems that have recovered: most areas in Soweto, Aeroton, Boschkop, Honeydew, Olivedale, Cosmo City, Quellerina, Florida North and some areas in Roodepoort,” he said. 

He said as a mitigation strategy they have added more water tankers to provide emergency supply in areas that continue to be impacted.

“We started with 25 tankers early in the week and are now providing 35 water roaming water tankers. In addition, we have prioritised hospitals such as Rahima Moosa and Helen Joseph, where we are filling their water storage facilities using specialised pumping trucks,” he said. 

Gwamanda said they have noted improvements since Wednesday, with impacted reservoirs and towers recovering and this is having an impact on residents receiving steady water supply.

“Our systems will take time to recover. This is because water is not like electricity. You cannot flip a switch, and it comes back on. Water goes through the 12,400km pipeline of systems around the city of Johannesburg.

“While alternative water supply cannot replace the convenience provided by constant and normal supply, as an intervention and to assist our residents we have 35 water tankers providing emergency supply to affected areas.”

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