Johannesburg Mayor Mpho Parks Tau showed gratitude to the Soweto community for working with the Johannesburg municipality in conserving water at the Low-Flush Cistern launch in Meadowlands on July 12.
At the launch, Tau introduced a low-flush cistern to the community as a new innovation to save water following the phenomenal growth of the Johannesburg population.
“Everyone in Johannesburg must be grateful to the people of Soweto for working with us.
“We have been able to save in particular with the community of Soweto 2.1 billion in terms of water conservation.”
“We anticipate that apart from finishing phase 1 of the project we will reduce bulk water by 585 mega meters,” said Tau.
Tau said they have done a number of things to solve the water supply issue and to balance supply in Soweto since it was the area losing most water.
“We first started with what we call the pipe replacement programme because lots of water is lost in the pipe leakages.
“We have to replace 900 kilometres of water pipes in Johannesburg by 2017 so that we can save water.
“Unless we create a consciousness about the consumption of water people will not be able to save water, because if we are not conscious that this resource is very scarce we are going to have serious problems,” said Tau.
The low-flush cistern is a cistern modified to use less water by getting water from the toilet as you flush.
The cistern remains empty in its resting state and fills on demand to reduce internal plumbing leakage and minimum night flow.
“Because of the cistern we have been able to contain the amount of water that we consume in Johannesburg.
“We still get the same amount of water we were getting 10 years ago,” said Tau.
Tau said the cistern not only does it saves water it also helped in building local enterprises by hiring local contractors and creating jobs.
“We’ve been able to support 16 small enterprises as we implement this project and we’ve created 160 jobs,” said Tau.
The current phase of the cistern is being implemented in Soweto covering areas around Phiri, Senaone, Slovoville, Meadowlands and Dobsonville.
