Johannesburg Water’s systems face setback due to power outage
The systems setback will affect some Johannesburg Water reservoirs and towers.
Several Johannesburg Water’s systems will be affected by a power failure that occurred at Rand Water’s Zuikerbosch water treatment plant at midnight on September 19.
According to the bulk supplier, a thunderstorm occurred on Tuesday and caused a trip at the treatment plant. This has affected all the municipalities supplied by Zuikerbosch, including the City of Johannesburg.
This comes as Johannesburg Water’s systems are already struggling and Rand Water’s systems are also strained by the high consumption, which is going to exacerbate the situation.
Following the power cut, Rand Water technical teams attempted to restart the plant; however, this revealed faults along the overhead power lines supplying the auxiliary plant. The power failure resulted in the loss of 2000 million litres of water per day.
As a result, Rand Water is struggling to fill up its systems, which has a negative knock-on effect on the already struggling Johannesburg Water systems. The entity had been mitigating the situation of the struggling systems on a day-to-day basis by the daily throttling (reducing pressure and flow) of reservoirs, providing alternative water supply, as well as accelerating leak detections and placing extra teams on the ground to ensure that response times are quick.
The following Johannesburg Water reservoirs and towers will be affected: South Hills, Commando system (Brixton, Hursthill, and Crosby), Midrand systems, Crown Gardens, Eagles Nest, Naturena, Alexander Park, Berea, Linden one tower and Quellerina.
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