An answer to Gauteng’s water crisis is coming – but not soon enough

 ·29 Oct 2024

Although a dam project aimed at alleviating Gauteng’s water crisis is currently underway, it is still years from completion – meaning the province will have to make do on its own until then.

“Basically, there isn’t enough water in Gauteng,” said Water Department Director-General, Dr Sean Phillips, on Newzroom Afrika

Phillips explained that over the last 10 years, the demand for water has increased significantly due to population and economic growth. 

This growth has largely been driven by an influx of people in the province who were attracted by economic opportunities.

“We did predict that growth in population and the growth and demand for water and we plan to implement a second phase of the Lesotho Highlands project to build another large new dam in the mountains in Leshoto to bring more water to Gauteng.”

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is an $8 billion bi-national infrastructure initiative between Lesotho and South Africa. 

It aims to transfer water from Lesotho’s mountains to South Africa, generating revenue and hydroelectric power for Lesotho. 

The project is managed by the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA) and South Africa’s Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority (TCTA), and has four phases, including dam and tunnel construction. 

Phase I was completed in 2004, and involved building the Katse and Mohale dams and a hydropower station. Phase II, including the Polihali Dam and water transfer tunnel, is currently underway. 

The project is funded by international organisations such as the World Bank, and will eventually transfer 2,000 million m³ of water annually to South Africa.

“Gauteng is a water-scarce area there aren’t naturally occurring water sources in Gauteng which are sufficient to supply the huge demand,” Phillips explained. 

“Unfortunately, that second phase of the Lesotho Highlands Project started 9 years late, and is only going to be completed to be able to supply additional water to Gauteng in 2028.” 

He explained that because there isn’t enough water in the system, Rand Water cannot be allowed to extract even more water from the integrated Vaal River system.

At the moment – particularly during events such as heat waves – when the demand increases, Rand Water is not able to supply enough water. 

As a result, the municipal reservoirs become depleted.

“People living in high-lying areas, in particular, are negatively affected because there isn’t enough water in the reservoirs to create sufficient pressure to push the water through to the high-lying areas.”

Leak repair turned safety hazard and dumping ground. Photo: Seth Thorne

Phillips explained that even though the Lesotho project will help mitigate this issue, it is not a long-term solution. 

“While there is going to be more water coming on coming into the Vaal river system in 2028 from the second phase of Lesotho Highlands, in the long term we can’t keep building more and more dams in Lesotho.”

“There’s a limit to how much water we can extract from Lesotho to bring to Gauteng.”

Gauteng needs to start doing things differently and use water more sparingly, he said.  

In Gauteng, water consumption is exceptionally high at 279 litres per person per day, compared to the international average of 173 litres per day.

“It’s simply not sustainable for the residents of Gauteng on average to be using so much water.” 

While not everyone in the province uses this much water daily, this number is being pushed up by those who don’t use water sparingly. 

“Those people need to change their behaviour so that there can be enough water for everybody to get some.”

“The other key thing that needs to be done to reduce the demand for water, is that municipalities need to reduce the leaks and their distribution systems.”

Water leakages are a major contributor to South Africa’s non-revenue water problem. 

This essentially means that there is water that has been pumped but is “lost” before it reaches the customer.

“If we can fix the leaks quickly and reduce the amount of water lost through leaks, then there’ll be more water to go around to supply everybody and we won’t have these severe water shortages that we’ve been having,” Phillips said. 

“Another cause of non-revenue water is illegal connections in some areas of the province.”

“Quite a lot of water is lost through people making illegal connections to the water network and siphoning off water which they don’t pay for.” 

Gauteng’s weak billing and revenue collection systems and meters that do not work properly are another cause of non-revenue water in the province. 

As a result of all of these factors, non-revenue water in the province currently stands at an average of 49% across the different municipalities. 

This means that nearly half of the water in the province’s supply system is lost or unbilled.

As a result, municipalities lack the funds needed to maintain their water distribution systems adequately, Phillips explained.  

This creates a downward spiral: insufficient revenue leads to deferred maintenance, causing more leaks and water loss, which further reduces revenue.

“So we need to get the municipalities out of this downward spiral. They need to budget sufficiently to fix the leaks and increase the revenue and then get on an upward curve.” 

“So if we can reduce the leaks in the municipal distribution systems and if we can moderately reduce the average consumption per day of people living in Gauteng, then we can last through until 2028 without further water supply disruptions.” 


Read: Joburg disaster: Collapsing water infrastructure in pictures

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