Lonehill residents found themselves in a full-blown water crisis due to a slow reaction by officials.
On 5 December, Lonehill residents struggled with a massive water leak due to a burst pipe on the Sunset and Sunrise boulevards. A Lonehill resident said that they had not had any water and nothing was being done to improve the situation.
Finally, the Lonehill residents sought the help of a private company (which prefers anonymity) but, unfortunately, they couldn’t turn off the valves, so the water kept running, causing the boulevard to collapse.
The boulevard will be closed until further notice by the Johannesburg Roads Agency.
David Foley, DA counsellor for Ward 94 said, “Unfortunately, the Zandfontein depot was on strike, but the situation was resolved on Friday morning.” He added that the pipes were fully repaired on the morning of 10 December. Unfortunately, Zandfontein water depot was not able to comment on the slow response to the issue.
“We did work through the night to assure that the situation would be under control by Saturday morning.”
Lonehill residents were infuriated by the fact that no one was able to help them for five days. “It is unacceptable for us not to have water for a whole week, just because workers are on strike. There must be a backup plan to handle these situations,” said a resident, who preferred to remain anonymous.
The resident added that the people running the country cannot call on residents to save water, but then allow a leak of this magnitude to go unattended for so long.
“The incident that happened at Lonehill is unacceptable,” said Jean Berdou member of Future City Fourways. He added that digging was done by fibre installers who did not use plans to see where pipes were, and they did not use proper pipe detection equipment.
Unfortunately when the pipe burst, Zandfontein depot was in the middle of a strike, which meant that the pipe was not repaired for three days, despite the best efforts of counsellor David Foley.
Johannesburg Water then needed to go through a lengthy process to appoint private contractors to effect repairs. Berdou continued that the result was a massive loss of water and severe undermining of the boulevard’s surface. This has necessitated substantial road repairs and, at the time of publication, it remained closed.
“Future City Fourways calls for better systems to be put in place to prevent this from happening in the future.”
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