Just when residents who have been affected by a lack of water pressure and supply thought their woes were over, Johannesburg Water said this wouldn’t be the case.
On 30 May, Johannesburg Water said another power failure at Rand Water’s Eikenhof pump station would result in an immediate reduction of water supply for area’s directly fed by the station. Areas fed through reservoirs such as Brixton, Auckland Park and surrounding suburbs would be affected at a later stage.
On 31 May, Rand Water said that they were still recovering their systems and therefore the water flow feeding the Brixton, Crosby and Hursthill reservoirs and towers was still low. Rand Water said, “We’re expecting this to improve during the day. We have, however, managed to start one pump, to pump water from Crosby to start filling the Brixton reservoir, and we have started one pump, to pump water from the Brixton reservoir to the tower. Thus the Brixton tower supply area should start getting water but at low pressure.”
The Brixton reservoir still remained closed until Johannesburg Water could pump water using two pumps from Crosby.
Johannesburg Water added that they currently couldn’t pump water into their Waterval, Florida, Constantia Park and Horison towers due to the Rand Water system being recovered, thus those areas were also still affected.
Johannesburg Water spokesperson Isaac Dhludhlu explained that the Eikenhof pump station was a Rand Water plant that fed the Joburg Water reservoirs of Crosby, Hursthill and Brixton. Therefore, problems experienced at the station were likely to and have in the past been the source of water supply issues experienced in the west of Johannesburg including hospitals in the area.
Action to resolve the challenges were delayed when there was a power outage and Johannesburg Water had to place water tankers at the hospitals to sustain operations there.
By 30 May, Rand Water confirmed that they had started pumping water at full capacity into their system. Rand Water said, “Due to the size of the affected area, restoring water will take some time especially in our Crosby, Brixton and Hurst Hill zones. We are currently monitoring inflow into our reservoirs especially to start our own pump stations once water supply is sufficient.”
