Don’t panic about water supply in Joburg… yet

Johannesburg Water said although it can’t quantify or measure the impact load shedding has on water supply, it is not big because the city still receives 1.6 billion litres per day from Rand Water – enough for the whole city.

The water supplier said on Twitter that a few towers around the city, including the Brixton Complex reservoir, were experiencing issues with shortages as a result of the load shedding.

Johannesburg Water spokesperson, Isaac Dhludhlu, said 99% of Johannesburg residents would not be affected by water shortages and that the only people who would experience problems were those living in areas where the towers were affected by load shedding.

He said the towers were those “feeding” water into high-lying areas and water would not flow upwards without being pumped. Reservoirs were able to supply water to other, lower-lying areas without electricity.

“Our most impacted tower is the one in Brixton and we are working on solving the problem by using a machine that runs on diesel.”

Water supply graphic.

Dhludhlu said although there was no cause for panic, residents should “prepare themselves” for how load shedding would affect their lifestyles and know the schedule.

Deputy director-general for special projects in the department of water and sanitation Trevor Balzer also took the opportunity to urge people not to panic about supply because the department was monitoring the situation in the same way it did with the drought crisis in 2014.

However, he explained that “in every 24-hour cycle of rotational load shedding we can lose about four hours of pumping capacity.

“This is about 16% of capacity on a station, which would normally pump for 24 hours.

“So if we do, indeed, lose this type of capacity, we would require a similar reduction in consumption – as we did during the past drought.”

He said water users needed to make efforts to conserve water so that there was enough for everyone.

– jenniffero@citizen.co.za

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.