An eagle’s eye view of water networks and how Johannesburg fits into it

Johannesburg is fed water collected from Lesotho as part of the Integrated Vaal River System (IVRS).

The Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) director general Shaun Philips said, “Municipalities have the responsibly for the distribution and reticulation (infrastructure networks) of water. Neither the president nor the minister can vote out the mayor and it is not easy to hold municipalities accountable when there are problems. We can issue directives to improve water pollution and so on, but not when it comes to service delivery.”

The water that comes from your taps has been on a long journey.

It is first collected from the Katse Dam in Lesotho by the department as part of the Lesotho Highlands Project phase 1.

“The R40b second phase of this project should have been completed in 2019 but is now expected to come online in 2028,” Philips said.
The bulk water supplier has an additional R35b which will bring substantial additional ‘treatment and storage capacity’ when phase 2 comes online.

In practical terms this means there is no quick fix on the horizon despite Johannesburg Water’s (JW) infrastructure upgrades.

This raw, or untreated, water is then fed into the Rand Water (RW) system who manages the IVRS. Here it is treated and made safe for consumption. “There is not enough naturally occurring water in this system to meet the supply demand for Gauteng with a population of 16m and a busy industrial market.”

Rand Water’s total capacity is 5 200 million litre of treated water a day.

RW sells this to the City of Johannesburg whereby Johannesburg Water (JW) distributes it to various towers and reservoirs where it is then fed through gravity, mostly into taps for use by residents.

From the mountains in Lesotho to a house in Johannesburg, each drop of water relies on a system to be operating without interruption for the network to function properly.

“When there is an interruption like load-shedding or a mechanical breakdown, it causes massive problems. In the past there was some room to manoeuvre, but as we are already overextended, interruptions have often dire consequences.”

What should be done according to RW

• Joburg Water and municipalities must improve billing and revenue collection.
• Councils must allocate sufficient funds for maintenance and leak detection.
• Invest in additional pumps and pipelines.
• Coordinate responses to disruptions.
• Collaboration between entities must improve.
• Bring current consumption of Gauteng, 253 litre per capita per day, down to world average of 173 litre per capita per day.

Rand Water’s chief operating officer Mahlomola Mehlo said, “This whole process is managed carefully to avoid a Cape Town-like crisis as they had when Day Zero was announced due to a lack of supply.

“We have set limits of abstraction – how much can be taken from the IVRS by the department to ensure dam levels are carefully managed. At the moment, there is about five years’ worth of water in the various dams.”

RW is already exceeding extraction levels and despite ongoing challenges feeding more precious liquid into the system is not a solution.

The Johannesburg Brixton site with a new reservoir and boosting capabilities, for example, will not bring additional water into the network but will improve capabilities of supplying what water there is to residents.

Pumping is a daily conundrum.
“Most of our systems are exempt from load-shedding but instability of the grid affects areas outside of our specific areas terribly,” says Mehlo.

• RW supplies four provinces with water. Boosting water across the country takes a lot of energy and needs all mechanics to be online and operational.
•  Eikenhof water system (Brixton, Hursthill) is thrown into chaos the minute there is a power outage.
• The Swartkoppies network is the most stable.

Philips added, “Much of the water infrastructure is 120 years old and needs to be replaced. As we use more and more expensive ways to ensure supply in Gauteng, citizens will bear the brunt of increasing costs for water, unfortunately.”

 The demand-supply relationship for treated water in Gauteng is very tight and the system is vulnerable to disruptions caused by heavy load-shedding, electro-mechanical breakdowns or theft of cables.

Some areas in the Southdale and Langlaagte network

Reservoirs
Eagles Nest
Naturena
Crosby
Brixton
Crown Gardens
Berea
Parktown 2

Towers
Brixton
Hursthill 1 and 2
Crown Gardens
South Hills

Pump Station
Yeoville

Logan Munsamy, operations manager of Johannesburg Water, said many of the problems they are facing are historical. “In Brixton for example, in the last few years a lot of student accommodation has been built. Extra people require additional water, which we are struggling to supply.”

In the deep South, he says a similar problem exists. “Until recently, much of the land was open and unoccupied. Because of the influx of people, we need to resort to things like throttling or limiting supply to customers to be able to refill the reservoirs and towers.”

Water losses in Johannesburg are at 24% while the international norm is 15%.

Root causes of current challenges, according to JW

• Physical losses and high demand
• Climate change
• Increase in population

Identified solutions

1. Implemented actions

• Improve leak detection
• Pressure management
• Smart controllers to reduce losses
• Smart / prepaid metering
• Proactive replacement of defective meters

2. Electricity

• Improve load-shedding exemptions
• Instal back-up generators at key sites

3. By-law enforcement

• Enhanced cut-offs and credit controls
• Replace brass meters with plastic
• Instal meter guards for bulk meters
• Improve security measures at key sites

4. Infrastructure upgrades

• Reservoir repairs
• Construction of new towers and pump stations
• Larger pipes where needed
• Crosby and Brixton to be enhanced and upgraded

 Johannesburg is a water-scarce city within a water-scarce country