Rand Water’s 58-hour maintenance completed

The repairs that were conducted during the planned Rand Water shutdown, July 11 at 19:00, to July 14 at 05:00, have been completed and Johannesburg Water systems are gradually recovering.

Johannesburg Water says residents in some areas have confirmed that water is gradually returning to their systems, particularly in Rosebank, Dunkeld West, Oakdene, Kenilworth, and parts of Soweto.

“As this was one of the biggest planned maintenance shutdowns, there were challenges experienced as expected of operations of this magnitude.”

Some of the major issues which impacted Johannesburg Water systems are as follows:

• The Zwartkopjes repairs, which were supposed to take 24 hours, were only completed at 01:00 on July 13, as opposed to 19:00 on July 12.

• There was no continuous pumping of the 24% of water at the Eikenhof Booster Station that was supposed to take place throughout the shutdown. There was no pumping on Wednesday night, resulting in Soweto and Lenasia systems being critically low to empty. By Thursday, the Eikenhof system was empty.

• The entity did not get the 300 megalitres of extra water pumping into Johannesburg Water systems as promised by the bulk supplier.

The water utility says although work has been completed, Johannesburg Water customers are reminded that full recovery will take five to 14 days.

“To give context to the recovery process, water is not like electricity. When power comes back after a power failure, one can hit a switch and the light comes back almost immediately. Water, on the other hand, is supplied through a long series of pipelines,” said Johannesburg Water.

Residents are advised that if a reservoir goes low or empty, as the majority of them did during the shutdown, it sometimes takes days and even weeks to recover that storage.

The Commando system (Hursthill, Brixton, and Crosby), a historically problematic system, will take longer to improve.

“As the recovery of systems takes place, Johannesburg Water will continue providing alternative water supply to areas that are still struggling, particularly in the Johannesburg CBD as well as hospitals and clinics. Technical teams will reroute water tankers from areas showing improvement to those that are not receiving water,” added Johannesburg Water.

Customers are urged to use water sparingly, only for drinking and cooking, and hygiene purposes. Please refrain from watering your gardens, filling up swimming pools, and using hose pipes to wash cars.