Nearly two weeks without water for some residents, with no clear reason from Joburg Water

Nearly two weeks after taps suddenly went dry for residents of South Hills in Johannesburg, it is a mystery why the Joburg Water reservoir remains empty as no real reason was provided for the unexpected outage, say councillors. 

South Hills experienced an unforeseen water outage earlier this month when the levels in Joburg Water's South Hills Tower reservoir suddenly decreased to one percent capacity by the Sunday. That evening, however, the levels increased and reached 65% capacity by Monday morning when water was restored to residents.

An hour later, DA ward 57 councillor Faeeza Chame told TimesLIVE: “Believe it or not, the water is gone again”.

She said no clear answers were given by Joburg Water about why the reservoir was empty.

“These people are playing games with us. There are water leaks all over the show that we have to beg to be fixed. I sent a message to the director to find out about the problem but they couldn’t give us proper feedback. They told us water comes into the reservoir and goes out when consumed. But that is how it works, so what is the difference now?”

The water outage affected homeowners and four old age homes, a school, an orphanage and a clinic had to halt operations for certain periods, Chame said.

She said they had to plead for the deployment of water trucks but only one would be sent in the morning.

“The truck comes but we can’t expect elderly people to run and carry buckets of water. There was no drinking water at Montanus Laerskool or water to flush the toilets. There is an orphanage with more than 40 children that has no water. I have asked people for transport to assist some people with getting water,” she said.

Pamela Hitchkock, 73, a resident at Northam Place old age home, said while they had a JoJo tank on the property, she hadn’t taken a bath in nearly two weeks.

“I am battling with breast cancer so fortunately the security helps me carry buckets of water. I want to keep myself clean. I go for radiation and I don’t smell very good. Tomorrow [Wednesday], I am flying to Durban to see family and I have to get on the flight without having bathed and bath when I arrive.

“The heatwave at the weekend was horrible. One bucket of water can flush the toilet only once. It’s a hassle to cook and wash dishes and I have to boil water to take a bucket bath. Joburg Water lies so much that we don’t know what to believe,” she told TimesLIVE.

Lengthy water outages have become an annual problem, said Hitchkock, who has been living in Northam Place for 13 years.

“The last time this happened, we were out of water for 10 days,” she said.

This was confirmed by DA ward 56 councillor Mike Crichton, who said they experienced water outages annually for the past five years. He said he was drafting a Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) application to get clear answers from Joburg Water about the constant outages.

“The reasons they give are a bit vague. They say there is a poor income supply. We want to know what led to that and what are they going to do to prevent this from happening again. One of the reasons they list is high consumption of water, but how can there be high consumption when there is no water at all?” he said.

Johannesburg Water issued a notice on Monday night about a rise in water demand which affected some reservoirs and towers as use exceeded available capacity. To mitigate this, Joburg Water said it is rolling out water demand management interventions to stabilise all systems, which may result in poor water pressure or a complete lack of water in certain areas, particularly high-lying areas.

The notice confirmed pumping into the South Hills Tower resumed on Sunday night and continued until Monday. “However, due to a decrease in supply pressure, pumping has been halted. It will recommence once supply pressure improves,” the notice said.

Joburg Water said the City of Johannesburg has instituted level 1 water restrictions which are rolled out annually between September 1 and March 31 to control excessive water use.

Joburg Water did not respond to questions sent by TimesLIVE.