Rand Water says it will further apply flow management to its reservoirs to ensure that it takes full control of water supply and no longer relies on consumers to reduce consumption across the municipalities.
In a statement on Friday, the water utility said the matter of high-water consumption and various calls for municipalities to act brought forth this decision.
“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 a 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 a world’s average of 173 litres per person per day. This is against the backdrop of Rand Water over abstracting or exceeding its abstraction license by 400 million cubic metres (Mm3) of water per annum.”
Water supply will still be sufficient
Rand Water also stated that despite imposing water reductions of 30%, there is still enough water in the reservoirs to mitigate, amongst the others, intermittent supply.
“Despite this, water consumption continues to rise, and reservoirs’ levels continue to decrease because of even higher water usage.”
The application of the flow will be implemented from 8pm this evening until the system recovers, according to Rand Water.
Affected municipalities:
• City of Johannesburg
• City of Ekurhuleni
• City of Tshwane
• Rand West Local Municipality
• Mogale City Local Municipality
• Rustenburg Local Municipality
“To avoid the intermittent water supply, consumers must reduce their consumption. We recommend that municipalities impose water restrictions through their by-laws and effectively police their implementations.”
“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.”
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