Rand Water is imposing 30% water restrictions amid rising water consumption and decreasing reservoir levels.
The agency, in a statement on Friday, said that, since the start of spring, Rand Water’s bulk water provision to municipalities increased from an average of 4.3-billion litres of water a day to 4.9-billion litres of water a day.
“There are about 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,” Rand Water explains.
Rand Water is over abstracting or exceeding its abstraction licence by 400-million cubic metres of water a year.
Rand Water imposed water supply reduction of 30% to safeguard the integrity of the system and to ensure continued water supply, further applying the flow control management of its reservoirs to stabilise and avoid the emptying of the reservoirs and complete system crash.
“This measure will ensure that Rand Water takes full control of water supply and no longer relies on the consumers to reduce consumption,” Rand Water comments, noting that the application of flow control will be applied from 20h00 on October 14 until the system recovers.
Intermittent water supply may be expected in many areas within the cities of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane, as well as the Rand West, Mogale City and Rustenburg local municipalities.
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.”