Gauteng urged to do more to preserve water

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Pretoria – Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane says Gauteng municipalities and residences must do more to preserve water.

The Minister was addressing media at Rand Water in Glenvista, Johannesburg, on Tuesday, following the recent water restrictions imposed on Gauteng.

On 12 August 2016, the department gazetted the implementation of water restrictions for the Integrated Vaal River System that largely affects water users in Gauteng.

“The restrictions are intended to allow us to manage our water supplies and to stretch available resources to ensure sustainable supply,” the Minister said.

She said since the water restrictions were imposed in the Johannesburg region, some municipalities have shown a significant reduction in water consumption towards the required 15%.

“We have also agreed that municipalities must do more work to recover a portion of the unaccounted for water that is lost through leaks and water wasting infrastructure.

“If one looks at Johannesburg, 35% of water currently is non-revenue, 16% of this is likely lost to leaks,” Minister Mokonyane said.

These restrictions include the 15% reduction of consumption by domestic users and 20% reduction for irrigation users.

According to the Minister, the Vaal River System is currently at an average dam level of 51.8%.

“As a department, we are monitoring the system and the monitoring indicates we may reach a level of 25% by 14 November 2016, should we fail to see a reduction in water use and consumption. This will trigger the next level of interventions to be implemented,” the Minister said.

Earlier, Minister Mokonyane had a meeting with Rand Water officials, the Gauteng Provincial Government and the affected municipalities in Gauteng, particularly the Metropolitan Municipalities of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni.

The Minister said the meeting was to get municipalities and the province to agree on what can be done to reduce consumption, enforce restrictions and manage the system to minimise disruptions, while mobilising consumers to reduce consumption.

“For a measurable impact to be achieved, a wholesale reduction is required by consumers across the board.

“We have thus agreed to intensify our work towards leak detection, leak repairs and maintenance to reduce further water losses. There is commitment to deal with wastage decisively,” she said.

The meeting was also aimed at assessing the impact on water demand and use since the implementation of restrictions and government's response to the current water challenges, as outlined by the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Drought.

The restrictions that have been implemented by Tshwane and Rand Water are a result of the current weather conditions.

The City of Tshwane implemented water restrictions in most of their towns due to the heatwave towards the end of the first week of October 2015. With no major rainfall currently, the water restrictions have continued.

Towards the end of October, Rand Water informed the three metros in Gauteng (Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekhurhuleni) of the low levels in the water reservoirs due to very high temperature and no or low rainfall.

According to the Department of Water and Sanitation, national storage continues to be under increasing stress, as the dam levels continue to show a steady decline week-on-week.

This is based on the latest dam levels assessment conducted on 26 September 2016 by the department. The levels are down by 0.5% to 51.4%. Last year, at the same time, the dam levels were at 70.3%. – SAnews.gov.za