Rand Water has recommended that the municipalities impose water restrictions through their by-laws and ensure effective monitoring of their implementations amid worsening water consumption.
The entity said the matter of high water consumption and various call to action requests to municipalities and consumers to use water sparingly is of utmost importance.
Rand Water spokesperson, Makenosi Maroo, said since the beginning of spring, Rand Water’s bulk water provision to municipalities has increased from an average of 4 300 million litres of water a day to 4 900 million litres of water per day.
“There are approximately 17 million people in municipalities supplied by Rand Water. On average, water consumption in Gauteng, per person per day, is over 300 litres against the world average of 173 litres per person per day.
“This is against the backdrop of Rand Water over abstracting or exceeding its abstraction licence by 400 million cubic metres of water per annum,” Maroo said.
To safeguard the integrity of the system and to ensure continues water supply, Maroo said Rand Water has imposed water supply reduction of 30%, so that there is still enough water in the reservoirs to mitigate, amongst others, intermittent supply.
Despite this, Maroo said water consumption continues to rise, and the reservoirs’ levels continue to decrease due to even higher water usage.
To avoid the emptying of the reservoirs and a complete system crash, Rand Water will further apply flow control management of its reservoirs.
“This measure will ensure that Rand Water takes full control of water supply and no longer relies on the consumers to reduce consumption. The application of flow control will be applied from 08:00pm on 14 October 2022 until the system recovers,” Maroo said.
Intermittent water supply maybe expected in many areas within the following municipalities:
- City of Johannesburg
- City of Ekurhuleni
- City of Tshwane
- Rand West Local Municipality
- Mogale City Local Municipality
- Rustenburg Local Municipality
“We further recommend a ban on use of sprinkler systems for watering lawns, use of hosepipes to wash cars and clean pavements as some of the measures to save the situation,” Maroo said. – SAnews.gov.za
