Van Der Vywe Old Aged Home resident Priscilla Kapp shows her water bottles she uses to collect drinking water. Pictures: Henk Kruger/African News Agency (ANA)
Johannesburg ‒ Tighter water restrictions applied by Rand Water could result in “water shedding” in Gauteng of between one and 10 hours from 8pm on Friday.
This follows a desperate appeal by the water supplier for Gauteng residents to drastically reduce their consumption earlier this week.
Now water shedding will be implemented as a result of residents apparently ignoring that call, with high water consumption still being recorded in the province. Rand Water has also pleaded with municipalities in Gauteng to use water sparingly.
“Since the beginning of spring, Rand Water’s bulk water provision to municipalities has increased from an average of 4 300 million litres of water a day to 4 900 million litres of water a day,” Rand Water said in a statement.
“There are approximately 17 million people in municipalities supplied by Rand Water. On average, water consumption in Gauteng per person per day is over 300 litres against a world’s average of 173 litres per person per day. This is against the backdrop of Rand Water over abstracting or exceeding its abstraction licence by 400 million cubic metres of water per annum.
“To safeguard the integrity of the system and to ensure continued water supply Rand Water imposed water supply reduction of 30% so that there is still enough water in the reservoirs to mitigate, among others, intermittent supply,” the statement read.
Rand Water said that despite this, water consumption continues to rise, and the levels of reservoirs continue to decrease because of even higher water usage.
“To stabilise and avoid the emptying of the reservoirs and complete system crash, Rand Water will further apply the flow control management of its reservoirs. This measure will ensure that Rand Water takes full control of water supply and no longer relies on the consumers to reduce consumption,” Rand Water said.
It said flow control would be applied from 8pm on Friday until the system recovers.
Intermittent water supply may be expected in many areas within the following municipalities: City of Joburg, City of Ekurhuleni, City of Tshwane, Rand West Local Municipality, Mogale City Local Municipality and Rustenburg Local Municipality.
To avoid intermittent water supply, consumers are urged to reduce their consumption.
Rand Water highlighted that it will recommend that municipalities impose water restrictions through their by-laws and effectively police their implementations.
“We further recommend a ban on use of sprinkler systems for watering lawns, use of hosepipes to wash cars and clean pavements as some of the measures to save the situation.”
IOL