Water outage – Tshwane suburbs to face days of shortage

Large parts of Pretoria might face days without water following a power failure at a Rand Water booster station last week.

“We still do not have an estimated time to completion,” said Rand Water in a statement.

On Friday, the Mapleton booster station in Ekurhuleni experienced a total power supply failure.

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The Rand Water station is supplied from the City of Ekurhuleni substation fed from the Eskom grid, which provides water to the Tshwane metro’s Vlakfontein reservoir.

The power failure was a result of an Eskom transformer that tripped, affecting the Ekurhuleni substation. “As a result, the power supply from the City of Ekurhuleni is insufficient to enable Rand Water to pump full loads.”

Rand Water said it was only pumping 330 million litres of water per day, which was “54% below normal pumping capacity of 730 million litres per day”.

The Tshwane metro’s MMC for Utility Services, Phillip Nel, said the water and sanitation department were in close contact with both Eskom and Rand Water to track progress with the repairs to the substation.

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Nel said Eskom was awaiting the test results from their repair work last night and was expecting the results soon. “If the results are positive, they should be in a position to re-energise the Rand Water station to full power, allowing for increased flow today.

This should restore reservoir levels and full supply in the next couple of days,” he said.

“As soon as we get confirmation that the repairs were successful, or any further news, we will communicate further.”

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