The water crisis we tried to prevent is here

Rand Water, the continent’s largest water utility that supplies potable water to the Gauteng province and other areas of the country, has issued a warning over an impending water crisis in the country’s richest province.

“Water storage levels throughout Gauteng Province have significantly declined due to excessive water withdrawals by municipalities, raising serious concerns,” said Rand Water.

“Rand Water is left with no option but take steps to protect its system from total collapse,” it added.

According to the utility, water supply systems in Gauteng, including Rand Water reservoirs, are critically low, and the situation is anticipated to worsen with the ongoing heat wave.

The utility said that it has repeatedly warned municipalities in Gauteng about this, but “unfortunately, the crisis we sought to prevent has now materialised.”

Rand Water said that it would like to alert communities, particularly in Gauteng, that water storage could soon be depleted if municipalities do not implement their recommendations.

“It is essential to act now to prevent the impending disaster,” said Rand Water.

At the end of September, Professor Anthony Turton from the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of Free State warned that the province is on the brink of a “full-blown Day Zero crisis.”

In an opinion piece for News24, he outlined the multifaceted causes of Gauteng’s water insecurity, primarily stemming from an imbalance between demand and supply.

The Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) echoed this view, noting in its recently published Platform for a Water Secure Gauteng (PWSG) that there is a critical imbalance in supply and demand.

Turton explained that one of the main drivers on the demand side of the equation is the “general collapse of the water infrastructure in the various municipalities being supplied by Rand Water.”

“As an indicator of this, Johannesburg Water is losing around half of the water supplied to it by Rand Water, while Emfuleni is losing a staggering 72%.”

According to government’s 2023 No Drop Report, there is a major concern in the “decline in water loss management practices, lack of metering, and poor infrastructure maintenance in majority of the municipalities.”

“With losses of this magnitude, it is impossible to keep the system pressurised, so irrespective of how much Rand Water supplies, the system remains unstable,” explained Turton. 

He used the metaphor of a leaking bucket to illustrate the situation.

“Think of Rand Water as a hose and most Gauteng municipalities as leaking buckets. They will never be full, regardless of how much water is poured into them,” said Turton.

Professor Adesola Ilemobade from the Wits School of Civil and Environmental Engineering echoed this sentiment, recently telling BusinessTech that municipalities can certainly improve on leakage reduction, which leads to significant waste of this scarce resource.

He highlights that global water network leakage should be around 15%, but many municipalities are far exceeding this threshold.

Rand Water emphasised that it is operating at full capacity and cannot pump additional water into the system.

It added that due to the limitations imposed by the organisation’s extraction license from the Department of Water and Sanitation, the utility cannot extract more water from existing sources.

Rand Water solutions

“The only viable solution to address this issue is through Water Conservation and Demand Management,” said Rand Water.

In light of this, the utility has urged municipalities to:

• Reduce the physical losses of 33% identified in the No Drop report;
• Repair leaks;
• Enforce by-laws; and
• Address illegal connections.

“Additionally, Rand Water reminds consumers that the organisation is a bulk water supplier; therefore, any water shortages should be reported to the respective municipalities, as the organisation (Rand Water) is not responsible for water distribution within municipalities,” it added.

Consequently, inquiries regarding water interruptions should not be directed to Rand Water.

Municipal responses

In response to these warnings, various Gauteng municipalities have implemented water restrictions.

For example, Johannesburg Water issued a statement that it is “undertaking vital Water Demand Management measures to ensure stability of all systems [and] consequently, various suburbs, particularly those in higher lying areas, may experience poor water pressure or no water.”

Johannesburg has implemented city-wide level 1 water restrictions.

Under level 1, filling pools with potable water as well as the watering of gardens between 6am and 6pm is prohibited.

Residents are also no longer permitted to wash paved areas and driveways using hosepipes.

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