Causes of water shortage explained
Municipalities and Rand Water must work together on resolve this major dilemma
ON Thursday September 25, DA parliament members called an urgent meeting for Rand Water executives to explain the real cause of the water shortage, separating rumours from facts.
There are people phoning radio stations and claiming Rand Water owes Eskom or the municipality money for electricity, and that is not true. In fact most of the rumours are not true, and at this stage Rand Water has seen improvement, but they do not want to promise people a specific date when water will be available to everyone again. Rand water is still working on various scenarios before they will be able to give feedback of an exact date when water supply will be back to normal.
There are two major causes to the problem, which affected several suburbs in the Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni Municipalities, Power Challenges and High Demand Season, Rand Water General Manager of Operations, Mduduzi Mkhize explained.
1. Power challenges
Power failures, insufficient power supply and theft contributed to this staggering problem because, very rarely, this obstacles occurred within a short period of time.
These obstacles created another problem because they occurred as a high demand seasonal.
2. High demand season
Rand Water explained that they experience a low demand around winter and a high demand during summer, with maximum demand during August, September and January. This of course, is influenced by what people do with the water like watering gardens.
For instance, Rand Water experiences a rise in the demand during January, because that is the time when most factories and schools re-open.
What people must know
It is a challenge for Rand Water to fill up all the reservoirs, not only because we are in a high demand season, but because as the water goes into the reservoirs, it goes out immediately because a lot of people use the water, making the increase in the reservoir not sufficient.
On top of that, the people living on the higher slopes in some of the suburbs do not get water, because a reservoir needs to be about 50 per cent full before it can supply the higher areas.
Fortunately Dr. Fawcett Ngoatje mentioned that Rand Water is currently in talks with the municipalities, and they want to have a date when all the municipalities, City Power, Eskom, Rand Water and the portfolio community could discuss this matter.
Mr Basson of the DA said it will be easiest if the municipalities and Rand Water can work together to control the outflow of water from the reservoir until there is enough water in the reservoirs to supply all.
