Majodina unveils interventions to avoid water shedding

Water and sanitation minister Pemmy Majodina on Monday announced her ministry's action plan to avoid water-shedding.

Working alongside all spheres of government, the department revealed it held an urgent meeting with Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi and Joburg mayor Dada Morero on Sunday night to address the city's water woes.

“Residents of Johannesburg have been experiencing increasingly frequent interruptions to their daily water supply. This causes great hardship for residents and is an impediment to economic growth in the city,” the department said.

The meeting resolved to address water supply interruptions, citing the population growth in the metropolitan city as one of the biggest impediments to consistent supply.

“The demand for water in Johannesburg has grown and continues to grow as a result of economic growth and population growth. The department anticipated this growth in demand and put in place plans to address it as far back as the 1980s.”

The minister explained that Johannesburg Water buys treated water from Rand Water and supplies it to the city's residents, while Rand Water buys raw, untreated water from the department of water & sanitation [DWS] as well as abstract raw water from the integrated Vaal river system [IVRS].

“The demand-supply relationship for treated water in Johannesburg is very tight and the system is vulnerable to disturbances caused by electromechanical breakdowns or spikes in demand caused by heatwaves,” she said.

The city was instructed to reduce leaks in its water distribution system and to complete its current reservoir and pumping station construction projects.

“The 2023 No Drop report issued by DWS found that water losses in Johannesburg were 35%, compared to the international norm of 15%. Reducing water losses requires a multipronged approach by the city, including among other measures, improving billing and revenue collection to increase the funds available for maintenance and to provide better incentives for water to be used efficiently, improving pressure management, replacing ageing pipes which burst frequently and installing water meters or replacing dysfunctional bulk and customer water meters so that water flows can be measured accurately to determine the location of the losses,” the department said.

The city committed to implementing measures that include throttling water supply between 9pm and 4am to enable reservoir levels to recover overnight.

This will be implemented continuously from November 14 until the system is fully recovered. This is aimed at reducing water losses at night when demand is low, which will substantially reduce water losses.

Majodina announced plans with National Treasury to put in place a public-private partnership for the reduction of non-revenue water, to mobilise private sector funding and expertise for reducing non-revenue water.

The meeting noted and strongly supported the approval by the Johannesburg city council of a turnaround strategy for Joburg Water, which includes giving the entity full control over all the functions related to managing water supply in the city, so that it can be held accountable.

The minister cautioned Gauteng residents about skyrocketing water usage levels, , amounting to 279 litres per person per day — 60% above the world average of 173 litres a day. She said this posed a risk to the sustainability of the scarce resource.

“This is an anomaly given that South Africa is a water-scarce country with limited sustainable water resources and among the top 30 driest countries globally.

“Gauteng’s long-term water consumption will need to be carefully managed, because there are limits to which further phases of water transfer projects can continue to provide additional water to Gauteng at an affordable cost.”

The department committed to working hand-in-hand with the city's water entity, provincial government and other municipalities in Gauteng as well as civil society, business leaders and experts to aggressively embark on a communications campaign to encourage residents to use water sparingly.

This will be managed by an independent body called Platform for a Water Secure Gauteng, which has created a dashboard the water & sanitation department's website to provide the public with detailed information on the status of the water supply in Gauteng. 

Majodina vowed that the political leadership in the three spheres of government are confident that these measures will be implemented with the necessary urgency.

The inter-governmental grouping will convene weekly meetings every Sunday to monitor progress.

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