Pretoria - The City of Tshwane has reiterated its call for residents to use water sparingly, as Rand Water says provincial usage has increased despite calls for frugal consumption.
While hot temperatures have affected water available across the country in recent weeks, heightened usage has resulted in water levels further dropping from 38% to 30% in Rand Water reservoirs.
This, Rand Water said, was despite all efforts to conserve water, including limiting its supply by 30%.
Utility Services and Regional Operations MMC Daryl Johnston said Rand Water had been applying flow control from Friday evening and planned to keep that going until the system recovered.
Johnston said: “This may result in intermittent water supply to various Gauteng municipalities, including the City of Tshwane.”
Level 2 water restriction tariffs on water usage, with increased costs, came into effect from October 4, in line with Rand Water’s implementation.
“We have been calling on Tshwane residents and businesses to limit water usage,” Johnston said.
“Despite these calls we have seen a week to week surge in water usage, from 640 megalitres per day, increasing to 717 megalitres per day this past week.
“We have already seen areas across the city losing supply during this period,” Johnston said.
“Luckily in most areas we have been able to work with Rand Water to help mitigate these issues and ensure supply is restored within a relatively short period.
“However, despite our efforts we do have limited areas with extended outages that take longer to restore.”
The City acknowledged that with the additional flow control, Rand Water would likely be more constrained in its ability to prevent outages until water usage dropped significantly across Gauteng.
Johnston said he needed to ask all Tshwane residents to seriously step up because despite calls to conserve water the city’s usage had surged.
“Please stop watering your gardens, filling your pools, washing your cars and using hoses for cleaning outside areas. “Please take action now while we have supply, so that we do not run out,” said Johnston.
On Saturday morning Johnston announced that Rand Water had restricted the Koedoesnek HL reservoir which level was critical at 1% due to exceedingly high usage of water.
This affected Faerie Glen, Wapadrand Proper, Equestria, The Willows, Koedoesnek, Valley Farm, Tweefontein, Paramount Estate and Hartebeespoort.
“Meanwhile, we had stopped pumping water to the Soshanguve K tower in order to allow the reservoir level to recover.
‘The reservoir level is more than 40% and so we have dispatched a team earlier today to start pumping to the tower,” Johnston said.
“I need to ask residents of Soshanguve to also please be extra careful with their water usage as this area’s usage is straining the ability of the City to supply. If everyone is careful we will not need to limit supply to rebuild reservoir levels.
“Certain areas have particularly high water usage which is resulting in water running out faster than in others parts.
“However, while these two areas are heavily affected, the entire city is still at risk.
“We plead with all residents to take this seriously so your area does not also become at critical risk of running low on water.”
Pretoria News