City of Johannesburg to implement water restrictions

Image source: Eranda Kumarapperuma – 123RF.com

Set to come into effect on Thursday, the move aims to enable reservoir levels to recover overnight.

The announcement was made by Water and Sanitation Minister, Pemmy Majodina, during a media briefing held in Johannesburg on Monday, 11 November. This followed an urgent meeting held on Sunday to address the challenges of water in the City of Johannesburg.

Majodina reported that the Sunday meeting reached a unanimous agreement on the causes of the water supply interruptions and what needs to be done to restore a stable water supply to residents of Johannesburg.

The Minister noted that the 2023 No Drop report found that the average consumption of water in Gauteng to be 279 litres per person per day.

“This is 60% above the world average of 173 litres per person per day, which is an anomaly given that South Africa is a water-scarce country with limited sustainable water resources and amongst the top 30 driest countries globally.”

The 2023 No Drop report also found that water losses in Johannesburg were sitting at 35%, compared to the international norm of 15%.

The No Drop programme focuses on water conservation and demand management, aimed at ensuring that water distribution systems function effectively.

Majodina said reducing water losses requires a multi-pronged approach by the city.

This includes amongst others, improving billing and revenue collection to increase the funds available for maintenance and to provide better incentives for water to be used efficiently, improving pressure management and replacing ageing pipes which burst frequently.

The department, Rand Water, provincial government, and all Gauteng municipalities, are working together with civil society leaders, business leaders and experts to implement a large-scale communications and awareness campaign regarding the need to use water more sparingly.

“The meeting noted that an independent body called the Platform for a Water Secure Gauteng has been established to manage this campaign and that, as a first step, a dashboard has been created on the Department of Water and Sanitation website to provide the public with detailed information on the status of water supply in Gauteng,” Majodina said.

Meanwhile, measures currently being implemented by Johannesburg Water, in a bid to save water include:

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

• Procurement of a panel of contractors for emergency repairs of large diameter pipe water leaks as well as increasing the number of teams on standby during the week to address leaks and burst pipes.

• Increasing the number of repair and maintenance teams on duty during the weekend with the aim of improving leak repair response times from 48 hours to 24 hours.

• Increasing the number of trucks available to its leak repair and maintenance teams.

• Implementing cut-offs of illegal connections in key informal settlements.

• 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.

• Accelerating leak detection (to date, 12 100km water pipelines have been surveyed and 2,396 burst pipes, 6,727 leaking meters, 442 leaking valves and 259 leaking hydrants were identified and repaired.) This intervention has provided an estimated water demand reduction of 9,457 million litres per annum.

• Working with National Treasury to put in place a Public Private Partnership for the reduction of non-revenue water, to mobilize private sector funding and expertise for reducing non-revenue water.

“The political leadership in the three spheres of government are confident that these measures will be implemented with the necessary urgency. It was agreed that similar meetings will be held every Sunday to monitor progress,” Majodina said.