While Rand Water continues to investigate how a crucial valve in its water system stayed closed for days, contributing to huge water shortages across Johannesburg, experts say South Africans should brace for an “acceleration” of water supply disasters.
“What we know from other parts of the country is that once these breakdowns happen, they happen more frequently and for longer,” water expert Anthony Turton told the Sunday Times.
“So this is a precursor of bigger things to come. It is not just the new normal, it’s the start of a new trend which is likely to see an acceleration of failures.”
Part of the reason is that water systems were not designed to run dry. “When they run dry, air enters and it takes a couple of days, maybe a week, to repressurise the system. Airlocks go through the system and cause all kinds of damage and you simply get an accelerated failure after you repressurise the system.”
Turton said this was a well-known engineering fact, “so we can expect failures to simply accelerate”.
“South Africa has now crossed a threshold in terms of water security and we are starting to see major systems fail. And the more your officials deny the failure, the more it betrays their absolute and total lack of understanding of the complexity of the issue,” he said.
Turton, from the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State, said the closed-valve saga either spoke to “gross incompetence” on Rand Water’s part or a breakdown of law and order if it turned out that the valve had been closed on purpose, in a case of sabotage.
“It’s a concern for two reasons. If the management of Joburg Water was unaware of it, it speaks to gross incompetence on their behalf. If, on the other hand, it was closed for nefarious reasons, in other words for reasons of potential mischief-making, sabotage [or] possible terrorism, then it speaks to the breakdown of law and order in the country and this now propels the whole Joburg water crisis into a crisis of national security importance.
Once these breakdowns start, they happen more frequently and for longer
— Water expert Anthony Turton
“Johannesburg is effectively the financial capital of Sub-Saharan Africa and if any individual can willy-nilly just close off a valve that is so mission-critical that it can bring a sizeable portion of the city to its knees, it means national security safety measures are not adequately in place.
Lengthy water cuts would have “serious implications for investor confidence”, he said.
Wits professor Craig Sheridan, director and founder of the Centre in Water Research and Development, said it was hard to comprehend how the lapse had occurred as it was “outside the frame of what should be able to happen”.
“Somewhere along the line, someone should have seen that there was no water flowing and if it’s supposed to be flowing and there’s an obstruction, you can find this stuff out. [Officials must be asked], why are you not actively engaging the system?”
Sheridan said lengthy water cuts had become the new norm across South Africa and this would be the case for “at least another six years” due to the lack of maintenance, South Africa’s increasing population and poor water consumption patterns by citizens.
“We’re right at the edge of what we can provide for people at our current consumption rate. I don’t see any way forward because we’ve got an increasing population, less water, infrastructure that is not as good as it was ... and we’ve got a populace which is not, on the whole, actively reducing their consumption.
He said water was not like electricity, “without which one could live forever ... you can’t live without water”.
Joburg Water has been battling to return water to taps in some parts of the city after a series of issues, most notably one at Rand Water’s Eikenhof pump station on March 3.
Joburg Water’s Nombuso Shabalala told the Sunday Times yesterday that most of the agency’s systems had either improved or recovered over the past week.
“There are a few systems experiencing poor pressure due to airlocks, specifically Blairgowrie. Technical teams are on the ground flushing out the network to improve supply pressure and protect the infrastructure against multiple pipe bursts that can result from airlocks,” she said.
Asked about the investigation into the closed valve, Rand Water spokesperson Makenosi Maroo was unable to give an update. “Like any organisation, Rand Water conducts investigations. In this instance it is a technical investigation,” Maroo said.
He did not answer further questions, referring the Sunday Times to an interview Rand Water COO Mahlomola Mehlo gave on 702.
In that interview, Mehlo said the valve issue was picked up during an analysis of the system with Joburg Water officials, who noticed that the Waterval reservoir was filling up rapidly, which prompted an investigation.
He was unable to clarify which valve was affected, as Rand Water has “more than 6,000 valves. So we’re not necessarily talking about a single valve that is operational at any given time. We have to operate a number of them.”
He said water was moved between metros to ensure a balance and that “everyone got some water. In that process, you open and close valves daily.”
Asked if it was sabotage or human error, he responded: “It’s neither. First, our valve chambers have a locking mechanism. Second, our valves are so huge that to open one you need a minimum of two people to turn the spindle. So the valve would have been closed in efforts to push water from one system to another.”
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