With taps running dry on a daily basis, solutions to end the water crisis must be implemented Photo Pexels
Johannesburg – On Sunday, residents of Robertsham held a silent protest while Johannesburg mayor, Thapelo Amad, briefed the media on the water crisis impacting them. However, they are not alone. Many areas of Johannesburg have also been facing a water crisis with most not receiving water for two weeks.
The City of Joburg has placed the blame solely on the feet of Rand Water. With its crippling infrastructure, the heat wave and constant loadshedding, the water utility has been struggling to meet the current water demands.
According to water expert, Dr Anthony Turton, approximately 20% of all the energy used in the country goes to moving water around. The constant loadshedding has put an immense amount of pressure on the water supply chain which is a very complicated one in Johannesburg.
“Johannesburg is the only city in the world that’s not on a river, not on a lake, not on a seashore. You have to pump the water uphill from the Tugela river in KZN all the way over the Drakensberg mountain into your particular place.”
Johannesburg’s sophisticated system requires brilliant engineers who know how to maintain the system. Unfortunately, they have all been purged or lost for various reasons, said Turton, which is one of the reasons for the water crisis.
The complex issues that have created a water crisis
The water crisis is mostly due to dilapidated infrastructure and poor planning, explained Turton. An enormous amount of pressure is needed to get the water from the processing plant in Vereeniging upwards to Soweto and Johannesburg. The pipes are designed to pump a certain amount of water and that limit has been reached.
“Rand Water can pump a little bit more but then by pumping more water through they’ve got to increase the pressure. By increasing the pressure you now start having all these leaks and all these breakages and failures in the system. So that’s one issue.”
Rand Water is also financially cash strapped as a large number of municipalities have not paid the water utility for its services. Then we come to the water towers which are supposed to store at least two days worth of water but stand almost empty, said Turton.
“You need more of those water towers. Those towers are all part and parcel of infrastructure and you should ideally have enough water in those towers for 48 hours of backup. At the moment we probably have enough for maybe one hour of backup. These are all of the complex things and all of this is about planning at the end of the day.”
According to Puleng Mopeli, Joburg water spokesperson, the water crisis is a result of power failure at the treatment plant in Vereeniging. This has happened continuously and has thus made it extremely difficult to pump sufficient amounts of water into reservoirs.
“As a municipality there is dependence on a bulk supplier. The Vereeniging treatment experienced a power failure in the early hours of the previous Monday. This had an impact on our infrastructure. We are dependent on that pump station to pump water into our reservoirs and water towers. It is really frustrating because this happens over and over again.”
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Solving the water issue
The situation residents find themselves can be resolved, said Turton. To solve the water crisis, the city needs to be politically stable. You cannot have a realistic plan until the issue of who is mayor is resolved. Once that is done, the solution becomes simple to create and implement.
“Until such time as we have political stability at leadership level, I cannot see us realistically turning this around. Assuming we can get that political stability, the next thing is to establish a team of technically competent people and unencumbered them, untether them from any political party and let them just look at the technical stuff that needs to be done. Come up with the budgets, do all the necessary technical planning and then put that credible coherent plan on the table. Right now it’s the politics that’s killing this whole thing.”
Turton feels that as long as water issues are depoliticised, Johannesburg and the country will continuously face a water crisis. If this cannot be done, there are two gloomy options. Either one needs to look at moving to a water secure town or finding ways to remove themselves from the water grid, said Turton.
“What that then means is that you’ve now got to start assuming some of the responsibilities of the state in providing an on-site water storage. You either have to start finding an alternative supply of water, which is complex in its own right or you have to start building storage capacity … In other words those are the two harshest of all options … I would say the second option is probably the most viable one.”
Mopeli admits this is an issue that cannot be solved “asap” which is why the city has been providing alternative water supply. However, the city cannot keep up with the demand and it is time people start looking into alternative solutions like boreholes and harvesting rainwater.”
“We understand that boreholes are costly and it is not as cheap as we want it to be. When we have our rainy season, we will be doing campaigns on rainwater harvesting to help residents store that water. With the water infrastructure at this stage, we do need alternatives.”
To hear more about the water crisis from Puleng Mopeli, listen to the podcast here:
