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Closed valve did not cause water crisis, says Johannesburg Water
Johannesburg Water has debunked the initial claims about a closed valve, pointing to system incidents.
Blairgowrie residents line up to collect water from a Johannesburg Water water tank. Picture: Supplied.
Johannesburg Water (JW) said that although the majority of its systems are gradually recovering, residents are not out of the woods yet as two systems have experienced setbacks.
Frustrated Johannesburg residents’ water woes started last week due to power supply challenges at the Rand Water Eikenhof pump station on 3 and 4 March.
For the last 10 days, the other systems in many parts of Johannesburg and several other municipalities in Gauteng and the North West have been affected.
Residents protest
As a result of the situation, Randburg residents staged a peaceful protest in Blairgowrie on Tuesday afternoon against the crisis, and they vowed to continue their protest on Wednesday.
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“We are living in unsanitary conditions, not able to clean ourselves properly, and running bucket baths, and the feedback we’re getting from the city is empty promises,” Blairgowrie resident Jean-Michel Durocher-Yvon told The Citizen.
Ward 102 councillor Lucinda Harman said the situation was a catastrophic crisis and a human rights violation.
The DA leader in Gauteng, Solly Msimanga, will visit an old age home in Blairgowrie on Thursday for a community meeting regarding the crisis.
On Tuesday evening, City of Johannesburg mayor Kabelo Gwamanda had a meeting with the ward councillors of affected areas, where he allegedly told them that Rand Water had discovered a valve that had been closed, thus restricting supply into the system.
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“It came out in the meeting that Rand Water has not apparently opened up a massive valve. Once they did, water started flowing through,” said Ward 99 councillor Nicole van Dyk after the meeting.
She added that there needs to be some accountability on Rand Water’s part.
Closed valve did not cause water outage – JW
The valve, which has since been opened, was believed to be the reason why Joburg suburbs had no water for nine days, but Johannesburg Water debunked that on Wednesday morning.
“The closed valve was, however, not the cause of the water outage, which was due to an incident at the Eikenhof pump station,” the water utility said.
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“Although the opening of the valve did assist with building a bit of capacity into the Linden 1 reservoir and tower, as well as the Linden 2 reservoir, the Kensington B reservoir and tower and Blairgowrie reservoir are still critically low to empty.”
Randburg and Commando system setbacks
In the latest update, JW said although the systems are gradually recovering, some Randburg systems—Linden 1 and 2, Blairgowrie, and Kensington B—and the Commando system, particularly the Hursthill system, have experienced a setback due to poor incoming water supply.
“This has resulted in the rapid depreciation of water levels at reservoirs, leaving them critically low as well as residents having poor pressure to have water,” the utility said.
JW said technical teams were engaging to understand the reasons behind the poor supply and find solutions.
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