Rand Water has imposed stage two restrictions to allow Johannesburg Water’s reservoirs to fill up
Repeated and prolonged blackouts in recent weeks have affected Rand Water’s reservoir pumps, particularly in Johannesburg where high water demand, worsened by this week’s heatwave, has left some parts of the city with empty taps.
“The highest ground in the country is the Witwatersrand, which is the continental watershed between the Orange and Limpopo river basins,” explained water expert Anthony Turton.
All of the water for Johannesburg and Pretoria, including towns like Randfontein, Krugersdorp, Florida, Benoni, Brakpan and Springs, has to be pumped uphill. “That takes electricity.”
The Rand Water area of supply is huge and it is the largest single bulk water supplier in the world because of this. “Each town or city has internal storage capacity that ought to be longer than 48 hours,” he said.
“If the pumps go down because of electricity shortage, then the bulk storage capacity is used. In effect, the bulk storage is a buffer, but it’s a finite volume, so unless it’s constantly replaced, normal daily consumption eats into that storage and we lose the benefit of the buffer.
“We then transition into a direct supply without the benefit of any buffer, so the system cannot be pressurised constantly and different areas run out of water.”
This week, Rand Water, as the bulk supplier, announced that stage two water restrictions would come into force. In a notice to customers, it said that over the past two weeks, high water consumption has seen the capacity of its storage dwindle from 52% to 38%.
Rand Water is now restricting high demand customer meters in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni “to reduce the current high consumption” and restore capacity levels back to 60%. It will implement the restrictions on the Eikenhof, Zwartkopjes, Mapleton, Palmiet and Vereeniging, Vanderbijlpark and Sasolburg systems.
Water scientist Ayesha Laher said in Joburg the amount of reservoirs “has not changed a lot” in the past 10 to 15 years, while “the amount of people that are using the water has increased dramatically”.
“So, I would assume that we are using 100% of the water at a faster turnover rate. Most of the places in Gauteng get their water from Rand Water, which has to be pumped to municipalities.
“The way a reservoir is set up is that it’s got so many hours of spare capacity,” she said, adding this is usually designed for 48 hours. As the population has increased, “there’s probably less spare capacity in the reservoir where they’re just managing to meet demand”, she said.
“Sometimes people use a bit more in summer, and then there’s water restrictions because the reservoirs are going a bit low because people are using water faster than they can pump. But now you can’t pump 24 hours because of load-shedding. The best practice in the world is that you would have a generator at every reservoir to serve as a backup electricity supply … so you can switch on the moment you pump and your electricity supplies go off.”
When pumping resumes, the water still has to flow into the reservoir. “By that time everyone has used it and the reservoir is now empty. So you need to fill up reservoirs again … you cannot have supply when people are using water all the time but the water that is coming in is stop and go, stop and go. It’s like running your bathtub and you’re opening the plug.”
In a statement on 29 September, Rand Water said the recent warm weather, coupled with load-shedding, has severely affected capacity at various systems.
Johannesburg Water, too, urged customers to reduce consumption. “Various Rand Water systems are still recovering from the recent power outages,” it said, with the reduction in flow causing Johannesburg Water’s reservoirs and towers to reach “critically low to empty water levels”, with high-lying areas experiencing little to no water.
Ward 58 councillor Rickey Nair said: “There’s been a problem at the Eikenhof pump and that’s our central point of water distribution into the Joburg areas. Our side, more to the west of Joburg, has been experiencing this problem since last week.”
Crosby, for example, is already being “water-shed” from 10pm to 4am daily.
“I’m sitting with a friend now in Crosby and they haven’t had water since Friday, not a drop. This morning, it’s been a hassle trying to get tankers out — there’s a large area of suburbs that don’t have water.”
The Eikenhof system, said Joburg Water spokesperson Puleng Mopeli, is affected by the recent power outages at Rand Water’s major infrastructure systems. “This has led to low to empty levels over the past few days at the Crosby, Brixton, Hursthill, Crown Gardens and Eagles Nest systems,” she said. Rand Water is “in the process of operating the Eikenhof system at full capacity, which is seeing positive effects as flows improve … at the reservoirs.”
Meanwhile, the Gauteng department of health said Helen Joseph Hospital and Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital were experiencing low water pressure. Despite their boreholes and the provision of water tankers, “the water supply challenges persists and continue to negatively affect the smooth provision of healthcare services”.
The Vaal Dam is at 93.9%. “There is enough water,” said Lester Goldman, the chief executive of the Water Institute of Southern Africa. “The load-shedding seems to be affecting the pumping of this water through to the various reservoirs.
“Whether it’s Joburg Water or the City of Tshwane, the distribution of that water from the bulk water systems through to the end user seems to be impacted by the load-shedding. Remember, electricity is needed for the pumps to work. So that I would assume is the real reason.”
He said all municipalities in the country faced three major challenges in the provision of water: revenue collection, asset management and municipal governance.
He emphasised that Gauteng residents are not facing a Day Zero. “What we would have is a shortage of water at certain periods and I don’t think it will be prolonged. It’s as a result of electricity. We may have sporadic outages but nothing more than that.”
Gauteng’s metros “may need to look at methods of increasing the reservoir levels during periods when there is electricity but there’s only so much you can take it to,” he said.
The affected municipalities are also looking at methods of self-generation just to get the water through. “That again has financial implications for [them].”
Water planners across the distribution cycle are “now going to need to almost plan for greater periods of load-shedding because the initial planning and reservoir structures and so forth never really took into account these continuous outages”, he said.
For small business owners — like Jenny Stevens, who runs a beauty salon in Melville, in the west of Johannesburg — the water outages are crippling local business.
“There’s been absolutely no water this morning and we don’t know when it will be back,” said Stevens, who was frustrated by water outages affecting parts of Melville and surrounds.
“Two of our clients wanted to come in today and they can’t because they’re doing highlights, which we can’t do if there’s no water … If it’s not the water, it’s the electricity.”
On days like this, the salon barely runs. “We just come in and wait to see if the water goes on and then we phone our clients to say there’s water, you can come in now … We’re a small business and our staff work on commission, so how are they going to earn? How do we pay our rent?”
From 6am to 6pm, the public cannot water and irrigate their gardens; are prohibited from filling their swimming pools with municipal water and are not allowed to use hose pipes to wash cars and paved areas.
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