Joburg to limit your daily water usage

Come Thursday, the City of Joburg will reduce your water pressure between 9pm to 4am daily, a major intervention to limit consumption as its reservoirs battle ongoing shortages.

This was revealed by minister of water and sanitation Pemmy Majodina on Monday as she outlined the city's intervention to address the municipality's growing water problems.

“Throttling of water supply between 9pm and 4am, to enable reservoir levels to recover overnight. The city intends to implement this continuously from November 14 until the system has fully recovered,” said Majodina.

"Implementing advanced pressure management systems, including the installation of 45 smart pressure controllers (pressure reducing valves), in addition to the 15 which have been refurbished and retrofitted to date. This is aimed at reducing water losses at night when demand is low, which will substantially reduce water losses."

Rand Water board chairperson Ramateu Monyokolo said this will affect all residents of Joburg.

"We will check where it affects the city badly then we will see how we can mitigate that, but yes, it will affect all residents of the city," he said.

Other interventions include cutting illegal connections and attending to pipe leaks speedily.

Majodina emphasised that the current water challenge is not due to drought. "Lack of maintenance to water infrastructure, illegal connections and pipe leaks are causing the water crisis," she said.

“Rand Water is already abstracting water from the Integrated Vaal River System [IVRS] at the limit set by DWS (department of water and sanitation), and will not be able to abstract any more water until the second phase of Lesotho Highlands Water Project starts providing additional water into the IVRS from 2028.

“The main underlying cause of the water supply disruptions in Johannesburg is therefore that the peak demand for water is close to, and occasionally exceeds, the available supply from Rand Water. The demand-supply relationship for treated water in Johannesburg is very tight and the system is vulnerable to disturbances caused by electro-mechanical breakdowns or spikes in demand caused by heatwaves,” she said. 

Joburg mayor Dada Morero said the city loses about 40% of the water it gets from Rand Water due to illegal connections and pipe leaks, among others.

“It’s not easy to quantify exactly ... but it’s around 40%, which is the biggest concern because it means while we buy from Rand Water we lose about 40%," he said.

Morero said the city is working hard to refurbish about 11 reservoirs in the city to improve water distribution.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court on Monday said it could not continue with the business of the day due to water outage.

According to the office of the chief justice, the exact cause of the ongoing irregular water supply is not known but appears to be generalised in the Hillbrow area where the court is located.

“Water leaks in the court’s water system were also detected, which further impacted water supply in the court. A professional plumber deployed by the department of public works and infrastructure, together with the department of justice and constitutional development, has since addressed the water leaks,” it said. – Additional reporting by Koena Mashale

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