City of Johannesburg Water Demand Programme
01 November 2019

Councilor Nico De Jager

MMC: Environment and Infrastructure Services Department

Johannesburg Water has identified key service delivery programmes to ensure reliable and quality services to all residents, including marginalised areas, these include infrastructure development and access to basic services.

Rand Water, which is our bulk water supplier has implemented “stage 2 water supply restrictions” in the City of Johannesburg mainly due to high demand and consumption. The City of Johannesburg’s licenced water allocation is 1 322 Ml/day from Rand Water. Over the past couple of years, our demand was on average 1 553 Ml/day which is not ideal but can be sustained.

This however increased drastically to 1 684 Ml/day due to the heatwave, late rainfall and drastic increase in demand over the past couple of weeks. This is well over our licenced allocation as well as the historical water demand. This is simply not sustainable and will cause water supply interruptions.

Areas identified with high water demand includes Midrand, Johannesburg Central and South, Soweto, Orange Farm, Ennerdale and Lenasia. Although not mentioned areas like Sandton, Roodepoort and Randburg must also reduce demand as this will assist for the overall demand reduction and create stability in the bulk supply system.

The actions being implemented:

• Over 120km of water pipes have been replaced in the previous financial year with 35.260 km of water pipes replaced against an annual target of 70 km for the current year.


• Water Demand Management project commenced in Soweto and Orange Farm with just under 2km of old reticulation mains being replaced to date. This will be followed by a project of fixing “on-property leaks” in the two areas which will commence in January 2020.


• Advanced Pressure Management whereby 37 stations will be retrofitted with smart PRV controllers will commence in January 2020. The tender is currently at Probity.

Johannesburg Water is regulating reservoirs at the rate of 20% to 40% in line with restrictions by Rand Water. We need all hands on deck to ensure that we reduce consumption in order to protect the infrastructure.

The organisation has also placed a high emphasis by investing in marginal areas with R99.6 million value of 22 projects implemented in Orange Farm, Diepsloot, Ivory Park, Soweto and Ennerdale.

In conclusion, I would like to remind City of Johannesburg residents that level

1 water restrictions are still in place and urge all to reduce their water consumption patterns as water usage has increased at an alarming rate and this is of serious concern to our capacity to supply at an optimum level by doing the following simple steps:

• Reduce the frequency of garden irrigation drastically especially now that the system is still vulnerable.


• Also, refrain from garden irrigation during the day(6 am to 6 pm) which is a bylaw contravention.


• Refrain from hosing down paved areas.

Media enquiries, please contact Cllr Nico de Jager
MMC: Environment and Infrastructure Services Department
083 899 2127
NicoDe@joburg.org.za

Mr Isaac Dhludhlu Communications Manager 011 688 1577
072 638 5346
Isaac.Dhludhlu@jwater.co.za