Gauteng water crisis: No date for Day Zero but it will be a summer of outages

There are growing concerns over water shortages in Gauteng after the water entity warned of very low supply and an increase in demand due to the heatwave.

Rand Water spokesperson Makenosi Maroo said yesterday that they were concerned that water storage levels throughout the province had significantly declined due to excessive after-withdrawals by municipalities.

She said the entity had repeatedly warned municipalities about the potential crisis.

“Unfortunately, the crisis we sought to prevent has now materialised.

Infrastructure issues highlighted

Water supply systems in Gauteng, including Rand Water reservoirs, are critically low and the situation is anticipated to worsen with the ongoing heatwave,” she said.

Maroo said the only viable solutions were water conservation and demand management.

“Rand Water has advised municipalities to reduce the physical losses of 33% identified in the No Drop report, repair leaks, enforce by-laws and address illegal connections,” she said.

Water expert Dr Ferrial Adams said it was the right thing (to do) for Rand Water to warn residents about the potential water crisis given the infrastructure mess we were currently in.

In the City of Joburg, 42 of 87 reservoirs had leaks, she said.

“I think it’s more of an infrastructural issue, that’s why we have been calling for a bigger budget for Joburg Water so that we can fix those reservoirs and fix the infrastructure that was broken.

“I don’t know what the date is for ‘DayZero’ but what we are seeing in Joburg is going to carry on the whole of summer with large parts without water for periods of time,” Adams said.

Adams said should things continue this way there was a possibility of taps running dry.

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Managing water municipalities’ responsibility

Associate Professor and Water Management Expert from the Unisa, Prof Anja du Plessis said all of the stakeholders from the department down to the municipalities needed to provide a clear way forward to address the growing concerns of our water.

“The silence from those who are responsible for the management of our water resources is deafening. Transparency regarding the ongoing water crisis and actual interventions are required,” she said.

The department of water and sanitation spokesperson Sanku Tsunke said managing water was the responsibility of municipalities as (they were the) water services authorities responsible for supply to communities, as well as operations and maintenance of their infrastructure.

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Water restrictions

City of Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba said all of the Gauteng metros had a loss of non-revenue water, but added that Tshwane had the lowest loss of non-revenue water.

“Our situation is not ideal; efforts are being made to improve our non-technical water losses. The city is urging all residents to make a concerted effort to reduce water usage by adhering to the level 1 water restrictions. Punitive measures will be imposed against transgressors,” he said.

Bokaba said the city continued to experience a week-on-week high consumption of water by residents and businesses despite numerous requests to customers to use water sparingly.

Joburg Water has also implemented level 1 water restrictions to manage and regulate consumption with a surge in demand due to the current heatwave.

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