Joburg Water says it is putting systems in place to boost water supply to areas that have received low levels of water.
The City has been hard hit by severe water constraints recently, with taps in Sandton, Midrand, and Alexandra running dry for several days.
The head of operations at the entity says they are using various tactics to manipulate the systems that are on the low levels to boost the water supply to those areas.
Since issuing systems, an update last week warned of low to critically low levels of water supply at some of its towers and reservoirs.
Joburg Water says they have been doing what they can to relieve the poor water pressure in many of the areas they service. This includes closing outlets to some of the systems during the night to build capacity.
Joburg Water Senior Operations Manager, Logan Munsamy says, “There should be isolated cases of no water pressure because the reservoir outlet on Bryanston and Illovo, which was previously throttled, is now fully throttled. We have various other interventions on our network as a whole, and these are a combination of closing inlets and restricting inlets to reservoirs, a throttled reservoir to build capacity for the day, so we can shift water to other needed areas that are at low levels.”
However, the problem of leaks leading to millions of litres of wasted water persists. Roughly 30% of Joburg Water’s affected pipe network is old and steel or asbestos-based.
“Joburg Water has a complex water network in excess of 12 000 km of water pipes, and we do have a degree of older infrastructure, but not all infrastructure is old; mostly the old asbestos pipes and the steel pipes in Orange Farm and Sandton CBD,” Munsamy explains.
Despite their interventions, their war on leaks is far from over. “In our war against leaks and reducing our physical losses, which currently stand at roughly 24%,” Munsamy says.
Johannesburg Water systems update
Click here for the list of affected areas: https://t.co/Rlx77VF0Ca ^S pic.twitter.com/tALeG3mZXd
— Johannesburg Water (@JHBWater) December 11, 2023
Continued fears about the quality of water have left many residents conflicted.
The entity, however, says they have achieved a 98.10% score on their blue-drop water quality audit.
Joburg Water Acting Chief Operations Officer, Jones Mnisi says, “We continuously strive to provide water of the highest quality to the city’s millions of residents and customers through our testing labs, and we pride ourselves on being the best water services authority in Gauteng while ensuring the water coming out of our taps is clean and safe.”
However, with a no-drop score, which measures the rate at which water leaks from their systems, the water entity scored an average performance of 72% in an area the water entity says they still need to continue to work on to plug the gaps that have led to such massive leaks.
