Let’s not take water for granted
When the taps ran dry for a couple of days in parts of Fourways, Sandton and Alex last week, frustrations abounded.
Imagine a world without water.
Dramatic? Well, when the taps ran dry for a couple of days in parts of Fourways, Sandton and Alex last week, frustrations abounded.
Conserving water was a priority and communication was key. The Member of Mayoral Committee: Environment and Infrastructure Services, Nico De Jager said in a tweet, ‘@JHBWater we cannot underestimate the power of pro-active communication. Please keep residents informed on the size of the problem. Because of the depth of the repair this is the biggest repair ever done by Joburg Water on a main line.’
Residents demonstrated a sense of unity as they took to social media to share information on the location of water tankers, stores stocking water and the latest updates. In a show of community spirit, some residents with boreholes welcomed community members to draw their water.
It was a time in which the words of a song by rock band, Cinderella, ‘Don’t know what you got till it’s gone’, came to mind as the water outage made us recognise just how precious a resource water really is and how dependent we can be on expecting it to run from taps when we open them.
It was hard not to cast a thought to residents in water-scarce Cape Town. The City of Cape Town encourages residents on its website, “We need your help to conserve our precious resource and we need to work together to help change the way we use our water.”
Cape Town’s water crisis plunges climate change into the spotlight. Just recently, Jaco du Toit, who represented the World Wide Fund for Nature South Africa at the COP23 negotiations said, “As South Africa is battered on the one side by droughts and the other by floods we are constantly reminded of the urgency of dealing with climate change.”
While the water outage in Joburg North shows a need for discussions on ageing infrastructure, the experience of living without a flow of fresh water from our taps for a couple of days makes one conscious how vital it is that we conserve water and that we cannot afford to wait until a crisis situation to start doing so.
How truly beneficial it would be if we could all learn a lesson from this experience to not take water for granted.
Write to us by emailing our editor on daniellap@caxton.co.za
