Question NW3680 to the Minister of Water and Sanitation
20 November 2023 - NW3680
Moore, Mr S J to ask the Minister of Water and Sanitation
Whether his department has put any interventions in place to resolve the water crisis in Gauteng, where some local communities such as in the Lesedi Local Municipality, have been without secure water supply for months; if not, why not; if so, what are the details of the interventions that his department has put in place to restore water to the local communities?
Reply:
The Department of Water and Sanitation has established a Water Supply Joint Operation Committee (JOC) together with Rand Water and all the three Metropolitan Municipalities (City of Ekurhuleni, City of Johannesburg, and City of Tshwane) in the Gauteng province. The JOC is a technical committee that has been meeting daily for the past two months to review the system yield and work out ways on how the water could be equitably shared. Also, the JOC looks at water supply challenges in the province as well as interventions to address the challenges. These interventions include restrictions of some of the bulk meters, closing some of the reservoirs overnight to allow the bulk water supply system to be at an acceptable healthy state. Currently, the water demand in Gauteng has grown rapidly, largely due to population growth and partly due to the increasing leaks in municipal distribution systems.
The Minister had held engagements with all the political and administrative leadership of all the municipalities in Gauteng and Rand Water in the Province wherein the municipalities are encouraged to address the increasing water consumption, non- revenue water and physical water losses. The municipalities are advised to improve their billing and revenue collection and allocate increased funding to maintenance and reducing leaks. It should be noted that the demand-supply relationship for treated water in Gauteng is very tight and the system is vulnerable to disruptions caused by heavy loadshedding, electro-mechanical breakdowns or theft of cables.
The Lesedi Local Municipality is a Category B municipality located in the south-eastern extents of Gauteng Province. It is one of three local municipalities within the Sedibeng District Municipality. Water supply for Lesedi comes from Mapleton Booster Station of Rand Water. The water is then pumped into Springs Brakpan Water Supply System of Rand Water. The storage facility is Selcourt Reservoir and there are 2-meter points on the western-edge i.e., Jameson Park/Kaydale and Heidelberg Town. The Selcourt reservoir must be above 50% capacity to sufficiently supply the Lesedi LM. The power failures, trips, pipeline failures and other emergency shut downs and overall water consumption by the metros affect the level of this reservoir.
The following water distributions systems are therefore affected: Rensburg Reservoir & Tower which supplied Walker, Vos, Zuid, JG Strydom and Coen Labuschagne. On the 12th of October, Rensburg Reservoir was at 15%. The Heidelberg Command Reservoirs which supplies the Heidelberg CBD, Jordan Park and Bergsig.
The Lesedi Local Municipality is currently implementing the below short-term measures to mitigate the water supply shortages in their area of jurisdiction when there are challenges: -
• Water tankering using three (3) municipal Water tankers, which services the affected areas. The high lying areas of Rensburg will be serviced as long as there are water shortages in the area.
• Designed System Operation alterations, to equitably manage supply to various settlements. That means the rotation of supply between low and high-pressure systems is done to ensure equitable access amongst all residents.
• Regular Feed back to the affected communities.
There are continuous engagements between the Municipality and Rand Water, on matters related to the water supply.
The Department provided R 18 million to Lesedi LM for the 2023/24 financial year for installation of the water supply infrastructure in Kaydale township.
Rand water is implementing an Upgrade of Mapleton Pumping Station which will be commissioned by December 2024. They are further Installing generators as a short-term measure in their Mapleton system by November 2023. Long- term interventions include construction of new reservoirs by 2028 at Brakpan 200Ml, and another 80 Ml Reservoir at Selcourt.
The daily JOC between Rand Water and Metros in the main also assist to ensure that the local municipalities are not negatively affected by the high consumption of the metros since water is appropriately shifted to ensure that everyone has some water despite the challenges of over-abstraction.
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