She said last year in October the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) sent workers to fix ‘eroded’ pipes after residents complained.
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“The pipe would burst in front of my house and they would come to fix it, but later the pipe would burst in front of my neighbour’s house, or up in Farrar Street,” she said.
Lewarne said the pipes were fixed in patches, but they weren’t completely replaced until October.
“Since they started replacing the pipes, we suddenly lost power, sometimes for five hours and other times for up to two days,” she said.
She then noticed that every time the power was out, the water tower would flood the street.
“The workers told me the area where the water is escaping is a safety feature so the tower won’t burst,” she explained.
She said she phoned the call centre about six or seven times.
Lawarne then explained when she complained that the street’s power was going out, a worker told her they had damaged electric cables while replacing the water pipes. She said the cables were fixed on the first Friday and Saturday of the new year.
“Everything is supposed to be fixed now, but we will have to wait and see,” she said.
She believes the houses in Farrar Street are on the same phase as the water tower.
“The amount of fresh water running down our street worried me,” she said, explaining the safety feature would release a strong stream of water for two to six hours at a time.
“I have pictures of my kids swimming in the water,” she said.
“As far as I understand, the water that is delivered into the tower is pumped from Rand Water,” she said.
“Shouldn’t there be some sort of communication between the municipality and Rand Water to indicate when [Rand Water] should stop pumping water into the tower?” asked Lewarne.
Ward 27 Clr Jacques Meiring said the tower was on the same phase as those of the houses, but five houses were isolated and the tower is now connected to the main power supply cable.
He also said the water supply cannot be stopped and explained if the water pressure is too low, it will take up to 18 hours to restart the tower and make water available to residents again.
“The water coming from that tower is currently feeding about five wards or 30 000 people – I won’t shut it down,” he said.
He added that water leaks will happen from time to time and the area will struggle until a new tower is built as the current towers’ telemetrics are also not working properly anymore.
The EMM was not available for comment at the time of publishing.
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