{"id":83780,"date":"2022-11-24T10:33:39","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T10:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theoutlier.co.za\/?p=83780"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:42:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:42:42","slug":"joburgs-water-situation-in-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2022\/11\/24\/joburgs-water-situation-in-charts\/","title":{"rendered":"Joburg\u2019s water situation \u2013 In charts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last month, when parts of Joburg had no water, the city’s leadership was in flux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this was going on parts of Joburg experienced water outages and low water pressure, despite the dams which supply the city being full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do we know about the water situation?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

All the provinces have more water this year than last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And the major dams that feed Gauteng are very full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Most<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

But even though there was water in the dams, water distribution from the south, centre and to the west of Johannesburg was constrained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johannesburg Water, the body which supplies the city with water, reported low pressure and sometimes no water in these areas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worst affected suburbs were outside the central business district of Johannesburg fed by the Commando System reservoirs \u2013 Brixton, Hurst Hill and Crosby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Areas supplied by the Brixton reservoir experienced water outages over 18 days between 23 September and 25 October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its neighbour Hurst Hill \u2013 which supplies water from Coronationville (Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital) to Melville, Parktown and Craighall \u2013  experienced outages over 14 days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crosby had five days of water outages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Timeline of events<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It began with a power failure on 23 September<\/a> at Rand Water\u2019s Vereeniging water works. According to Johannesburg Water press release, the power failure resulted in a  50% reduction in bulk water supply to the Eikenhof pump station \u2013 halving<\/a> the water supplied to the cente of Johannesburg, Soweto and Roodepoort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reservoir and tower in Brixton<\/a> was severely strained with Rand Water isolating (switching off) Brixton\u2019s pumps to fill up the reservoir and tower on 23 September. This often happened at night between 9pm and 4 am the next day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately the issue at Vereeniging was not resolved overnight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vereeniging\u2019s power failure affected Eikenhof on 23<\/a> and 25<\/a> September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 29 September<\/a>, a pump at Eikenhof tripped for three hours \u2013 which reduced the pump\u2019s capacity to 40%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A day later (30 September<\/a>), a power supply failure at the Zuikerbosch Purification Plant affected the amount of water supplied to Eikenhof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then on 3 October,<\/a> Palmiet which supplies water to Bassonia, Rosherville and Linksfield Ridge was at a critical stage and 200 million litres of water was diverted from Eikenhof to Palmiet \u2013 after Palmiet experienced equipment failure, according to a response from the Minister of Water and Sanitation<\/a>. The power trips at Zuikerbosch<\/a> two days earlier didn\u2019t help the decreased water supply at Palmiet either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 4 October<\/a>, Rand Water \u2013 which supplies Johannesburg Water with water \u2013 saw a decrease in its water storage capacity from 52% to 38%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To fill up its reservoirs it decreased its water distribution to the Eikenhof pump station, Zwartkopjes pump station and the Palmiet pump station \u2013 where systems \u201ccollapsed completely\u201d in Crosby, Brixton, Hursthill, Crown Gardens and Eagles Nest,  according to Johannesburg Water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the same day<\/a>, Rand Water agreed to stop supporting the Palmiet pumping station and to operate the Eikenhof pumping station at its full capacity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johannesburg Water, the City of Tshwane<\/a> and Ekurhuleni<\/a> also instituted stage two water restrictions (prohibiting people from watering their garden during the day with a hosepipe) on 4 October<\/a> \u2013 an increase from the annual stage one<\/a> restrictions put in place from 1 September<\/a> to 31 March. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two days later (6 October<\/a>), there was good news. Rand Water was in the process of operating the Eikenhof pump system at full capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it didn\u2019t last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 16 October<\/a>, the water in the Commando system \u2013 Brixton, Crosby and Hurst Hills Reservoirs \u2013 were critically low to empty and watershedding was put in place between 9pm and 4am so the reservoir could fill with water. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 1 November<\/a>, Rand Water lifted the stage two water restrictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do we know about the water situation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,446,8,1387],"tags":[240],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-83780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-government","category-news","category-politics","category-the-outlier","tag-johannesburg-water"],"acf":{"big_number":null,"big_number_caption":null,"big_number_link":null,"big_number_background":null,"big_number_text_colour":null,"big_number_icon":null,"big_number_wide":null,"featured_chart":null,"flourish_chart_id":null,"flourish_sub_title":null,"flourish_chart_width":null,"is_newsletter_post":null,"post_style":null,"show_on_front":null,"link_through":null,"chart_url":null,"background_colour":null,"text_colour":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86586,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83780\/revisions\/86586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83780"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=83780"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=83780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}