Joburg water supply crisis needs money city does not have — WaterCAN

More than half of Johannesburg's 83 water reservoirs have leaks or cracks, leading to regular water supply problems.

Of the 44 flagged reservoirs, 22 have been found to have such severe cracks that they have either been bypassed or cannot be filled to capacity, according to Johannesburg Water.

This means high-lying areas can go for days without water as water needs to be at a certain level in a reservoir for pumping to continue.

One of the towers being bypassed is Hursthill 1 which supplies Region B. This area includes Westbury and Coronationville where angry residents this week took to the streets in a violent protests after a decade of recurring water supply problems. Several people were injured in the protests.

Johannesburg Water's MD Ntshavheni Mukwevho said the city's turnaround plan approved by council last year — which requires R32.5bn over a 10-year period — sought to tackle these issues.

He said some of the projects aimed at resolving water supply problems in Region B were already under way, especially in areas supplied by the Commando system which includes the suburbs of Sophiatown, Coronationville and Westbury.

The Commando system supplies three reservoir complexes: Hursthill 1 and 2, Brixton and Crosby reservoirs. These supply large parts of south west Joburg including Westdene, Greenside and Emmarentia.

The Hursthill 1 reservoir has been bypassed due to leaks while the second Hursthill reservoir has a leak at about 1.5m, which means it can only be filled to below that mark, Mukwevho said.

“The issue is that when demand is higher than supply, the water level drops to a very low level which affects certain systems that have insufficient bulk infrastructure.”

Mukwevho said Region B's reservoir storage was at 31%-32%. Other issues included an insufficient pump station and bulk pipe lines that affected the supply of water in the areas served by the Commando system.

“The issue is that the system can function but only in an ideal situation where the overall storage, even at our bulk supplier Rand Water, is sitting at 60%. Then we are able to get sufficient volume.” 

He said as the bulk system was at 30%, this would negatively affect the Commando system while Soweto, Randburg and Roodepoort would not be affected.

Mukwevho said when water levels in the system drop, coupled with a higher demand, the system fails to cope, leading to water supply outages in some areas,

“The Commando system gets water from the source upstream which supplies Soweto, greater Randburg and Roodepoort,” he said.

Mukwevho said the city was already investing R800m into fixing the Commando system which represented the single biggest investment into a single system in the entity's history.

“We identified this issue a few years back, and initiated a number of projects which are in the implementation stage now, involving building a new reservoir in Brixton, a 26 megalitre reservoir and a 2.2 megalitre tower.”

Both were expected to be completed by the end of October.

Another “mega project” included erecting a 4.5km pipeline and two pump stations which would pump water from Crosby to the Brixton and the Hursthill reservoirs.

“That project started recently and is at 10% progress — we are earmarking to complete it in December 2026,” he said.

The two Hursthill reservoirs would also be addressed in two separate projects expected to be completed next year. A service provider for the Hursthill 2 reservoir which serves areas such as Melville has already been appointed.

This is part of a turnaround plan that was approved by council and received a capex budget of R1.7bn in the financial year, which started two months ago.

For Joburg to meet the required R32.5bn in the remaining nine years, it would need to allocate an average of R3.4bn a year to Johannesburg Water.

The entity has, before the current financial year, received between R1.1bn and R1.2bn for capital projects. The city would need to triple that to meet the targets of the turnaround plan.

WaterCAN, a network of citizen activists dealing with water safety, warned that the city was in a water crisis largely caused by issues it had long been aware of.

“Joburg Water has identified the urgent work that needs to be done and which reservoirs to start with... the problem is they don't have a bank account with money,” the organisation's executive director Dr Ferrial Adam said.

She said the problem was now a crisis which needed strong political will from the city's leadership, including mayor Dada Morero.

“The problem is widespread... lots of people would want to go to the streets and protest. A lot of people are at that point, those from Westbury and Coronationville have been living without water for 10 years,” Adam said.

She said that other areas in Region B such as the middle-class suburbs of Greenside, Parkview, Emmarentia and Melville had intermittent water supply.

“Every night people are throttled. When they get up in the morning they have water, but sometimes not everybody,” Adam said.

She said the only parts of the city that seemed to have constant water supply were areas like Sandton in Region E, which includes many of the city's newest suburbs.

“The older parts of Joburg have an older infrastructure, the pipes are older and they have more leaks and a lot more burst pipes,” she said.

Morero this week said the issue of poor water infrastructure was giving him sleepless nights.

He promised residents of Westbury and Coronationville that their problems would be resolved by the end of the year as the Brixton reservoir would be completed.

“The reservoir is probably at about 80% to 90% completion, we should be able to deliver it by November/December... it should be enough to manage that area,” Morero said.