Joburg water cuts: Recovery expected to take 5 to 14 days

Large swathes of Johannesburg are in for water cuts and shortages which might last as long as two weeks – and Rand Water’s maintenance shutdown was extended suddenly yesterday into an extra day.

The 58-hour-long shutdown, one of the longest and widest yet in the city and which will affect almost 138 areas, is scheduled to start from 7pm on Tuesday, 11 July.

The completion date of the maintenance has been moved from 3pm on Thursday 13 July to 5am on Friday 14 July.

While it was initially communicated there would be about 44 hours of scheduled shutdown, Joburg Water announced that Rand Water’s planned dry spell next week had been extended and would now come to an end 14 hours later.

But Rand Water spokesperson Makenosi Maroo denied the original statement which conveyed the shutdown would be 44 to 48 hours.

“We never communicated 48 hours. The implementation of the planned maintenance is 58 hours,” she said.

According to Maroo, the purpose of the shutdown is to complete a tie-in with a new pipeline between the A19 and B14 pipelines.

During the shutdown, Johannesburg Water infrastructure supplied by Eikenhof pump station will have no water supply and neither will those areas receiving direct supply from Rand Water.

“The planned maintenance will be undertaken to replace multiple valves at the Vereeniging water treatment plant, Eikenhof booster pumping station and Zuikerbosch water treatment plant,” she said.

“The last part of the project will be work on electrical boards at Lethabo pumping station.

“Some residents within the Rustenburg local municipality, Mogale City local municipality and the Rand West [City] local municipality will experience intermittent water supply during the implementation of the project.”

While Joburg Water warned residents in affected areas that recovery could take five to 14 days after the supply was fully restored, Democratic Alliance Gauteng spokesperson for infrastructure development Nico de Jager said there was a reason recovery would take so long which was not explained by the water entities.

De Jager said when Rand Water shut down, there will be still be water in the reservoirs of Joburg Water, which would flow out and be supplied to residents.

But when the work was completed, the reservoirs would still have to be filled.

“And as fast as water runs in, it will run out because people at lower lying areas will continue to use water, which then makes the recovery longer, unless you shut the reservoirs down completely – which is what they have to do to get it to an acceptable level, normally about 30% or 40%,” he said.

“They will then open the reservoir again but the lower-lying areas will draw water much faster than the high-lying areas.

“There will not be pressure to push water to higher-lying areas. It becomes a matter of science.”

“It will take days to recover. And the reality is that is what we are faced with.”

De Jager added it was important to mitigate and appeal to residents, especially in lower-lying areas, to use water sparingly even when it returned.

“Residents should bear in mind that there are also other people at the higher-lying areas where it will take a lot longer to recover water as water works on gravitational flow.

“So you need gravity for water to flow and you need pressure to push water over the edge to get it to higher-lying areas,” he said.

“There is not much one can do during the shutdown. You can blame Joburg Water or Rand Water but the reality is, it is a problem and now one has to make the best of the worst situation by storing water – and we need to work wise with the little resources that we have.”