We are facing an existential crisis with water

The city is not facing a water shortage at present, there is no natural disaster and we are not at war, yet residents who pay their rates and taxes diligently are suffering lengthy periods with dry taps.

When dams around the country are almost at capacity, why are users told they need to adhere to Level 2 water restrictions?

According to the Department of Water and Sanitation, the dams in Gauteng are sitting at 96.3%, almost full to capacity. Despite being a generally water-scarce country, at this moment, water supply is not the problem.

Some households have been without water for hours, sometimes days at a time following the September 23 power outage at the Vereeniging water works that triggered the current crisis.

Authorities place much of the blame on Joburg Water customers for ‘high-consumption’, as well as the weather, in media communications and statements.

Ward 87 councillor Bridget Steer said in an interview with Environment, Infrastructure and Service Delivery MMC Mpho Sesedinyane and Dr Anthony Turton, a water expert, “We have been living a nightmare and I’m not buying the spin.

“We were told it’s not load-shedding as critical infrastructure is exempt from load-shedding…this is a lie. Eikenhof pump station suffering a power outage that contributed to the crisis, but it has regular outages, so this is a lie.”

Turton said, “We have not updated our water since 1998 but our population has grown. This is a serious water crisis in South Africa – we have an existential crisis on our hands.”

City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava said “One of the things we are looking at is to see how to exclude Joburg Water from load-shedding which is difficult as the facilities are embedded within our network.”

The Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg Sello Morero held a press conference recently with the MD and CEO of Joburg Water and City Power. The meetings are referred to as a ‘war room’ having been established. Again, he encouraged residents to play their part and said they should harvest rain water and make use of boreholes.

Aside from water rationing in a bid to build capacity, residents have had to deal with the usual maintenance of ageing and crumbling infrastructure and unforeseen interruptions of supply as with a major burst pipe in Craigavon last week as one example of many. Untended leaks across the city too are causing loss of the precious resource.

Parts of Northcliff and other areas which already face crippling water woes due to parts of the suburb sitting high up the ridge were without water for nine hours on October 18. New pipes were being tied into the system. Following this, an outage was reported with teams being dispatched to investigate its cause.

Steer said, “We can see through the smoke and mirrors. As a ward councillor with several years’ experience, we can see Rand Water is a problem. So is the City of Johannesburg.”

It is unclear how this current crisis will be meaningfully solved. The paper will continue to update residents as and when new information becomes available.

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