Government’s plan to stop taps running dry in Gauteng

South Africa is preparing to release water from a mountain reservoir to top up plunging levels at the main facility that supplies the country’s commercial hub of Gauteng and three of its biggest cities. 

Water will be released from the Sterkfontein Dam when the Vaal Dam level falls to 18% of capacity from its current 28% in line with standard procedure, the Department of Water and Sanitation said.

The level at the Vaal Dam, which lies south of Johannesburg, has been falling due to evaporation from successive heat waves, poor early summer rains after a drought last season and the shut off of supply from neighbouring Lesotho because of a six-month maintenance project that’s due to end by April. 

The 320 square kilometre reservoir is currently falling by as much as 2 percentage points a week.  

The plunging water levels are another headache for the interconnected cities of Johannesburg, Pretoria and Ekurhuleni — in which a total of about 12 million people live — which have been hit by recurrent water shortages.

Poor maintenance has led to the cities losing more than 40% of the water they are supplied with to leaks.

Earlier this year water was cut off to a large swathe of Johannesburg for more than a week when a pump station broke down after being struck by lightning and on Nov. 27 residents in the western Johannesburg suburb of Westbury clashed with police over a water outage.

Johannesburg Water, the city’s water utility, said last week it’s considering tighter usage restrictions as it battles to maintain infrastructure and cope with increased demand. Already it’s reducing water pressure from 9 p.m. until 4 a.m. on some days.

Read: Trouble for airlines over flight prices in South Africa