Water woes hit Joburg Umhlanga
At home in the city, in hotels at the beach, residents and tourists left high and dry
Residents of Midrand and Sandton in Johannesburg could finally flush toilets yesterday after a power failure at a water treatment plant left many without water for five days.
But in KwaZulu-Natal dry taps all week in Umhlanga and Durban North scuppered the local tourism industry’s hopes for a bumper long weekend. While water supply has resumed in some areas, others were still dry yesterday.
Umhlanga Tourism chair Jeanie Sarno said some hotel bookings for the weekend had been cancelled.
“Put yourself in their position; you’ve worked towards a weekend getaway, and now you must go sit at a hotel or guest house with a bucket of water next to your loo!
“We are supposed to be progressing, and it seems this is regression. How can a guest relax when you can feel the tension and stress of the employees and that their jobs are now threefold harder, trying to source water from nearby tankers or swimming pools?
“So most of the guests would opt to cancel their trips at that particular establishment, and if they are given a refund, they will book elsewhere,” said Sarno.
Umhlanga’s hospitality industry is still recovering after high E. coli levels resulted in the beach being closed several times since December.
Sarno said water tankers were unpredictable. “Linen needs to be taken to the laundromats outside the crisis area to be cleaned, and we cannot recover these costs from the visitors. Most JoJo tanks have run dry.
“The ablutions on the beaches can’t be attended to without flowing water, and the malls and gyms don’t have water either. Yet again, we have a scenario where the visitors who are aware of the crisis are calling ahead to cancel or postpone their trips,” she said.
Umhlanga Ratepayers’ and Residents’ Association chair Terri MacLarty said the impact on businesses and residents was “dire”.
She said long weekends, especially at the end of the month, are important for businesses to generate as much revenue as possible. “This is a huge blow for everyone. Residents, including the elderly and pensioners, now have to run around looking for water tankers. Businesses also have to spend and buy water privately to sustain themselves.”
Several schools were also closed. On Friday, residents protested outside the Durban city hall.
eThekwini municipal spokesperson Gugu Sisilana said yesterday police would be asked to probe sabotage in connection with the outage “after technical teams discovered an air valve in a water pipeline was tampered with and another valve was vandalised”.
Meanwhile, northern Johannesburg residents said they had been given various reasons for this week’s water cuts.
Koketso Chipane, who lives in Waterfall, said their taps ran dry after Tuesday’s wind storm in Gauteng. She’s been driving to her sister’s home in Kyalami to bathe, wash laundry and collect water.
She said residents were given three reasons as to why the water was out. The first was that the reservoirs were low, the second was a damaged water pipe that needed repairs and the third was the windstorm.
“It is terrible. This is water, a basic need for something as simple as flushing toilets, washing hands, cooking and cleaning. We already have to deal with the electricity crisis and now it’s water. I’d rather deal with no electricity; I can’t function without water,” she said.
Johannesburg Water said the shortage
We tried reaching out to Rand Water but they kept on giving us excuses... We found that Rand Water had not stuck to that agreement.
Ekurhuleni’s MMC for water, energy and sanitation, Leshaka Manamela
was due to increased consumption followed by a power failure at Rand Water’s Zuikerbosch water treatment plant, which caused the loss of 2,000ML of water per day.
It said the power failure occurred at midnight on Tuesday after the wind storm.
Parts of Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg have had to endure shortages since last week, amid increased overall consumption.
Serisha Mark, who lives in Waterfall, said she had been without water since Monday.
“I had a dreadful week without water. You can’t cook, you can’t flush the toilet and hygiene becomes an issue. The backup plan is to buy water and there are JoJo tanks distributed but there is a limit of water and we were told we can’t drink it and only use it to flush toilets. I had to drive around to find a place to shower and ended up driving to my mother in Centurion, which costs petrol,” she said.
Businesses in Sandton CBD resorted to hiring water tankers as the outage affected areas including Morningside, Illovo, Bryanston, Parkmore and Sandown.
DA Ward 103 councillor Lynda Shackleford said taps went dry in her area on Wednesday after a water pipe burst.
This continued into Thursday when hotels started calling Shackleford to report the shortage of water. She said 75% of her ward was without water that morning.
“On Wednesday night we were delivering water to Morningside hospital as it was running low. By lunchtime on Thursday I had tankers in Sandown and Morningside. But the water has been restored, although in some areas the pressure is still low. Water is gold in this country,” she said.
Rand Water said yesterday morning that full pumping capacity had been restored in all its systems in Gauteng and would gradually fill the depleted reservoirs.
“However, we urge all consumers to use water sparingly as we have observed an increase in water demand due to high temperatures,” spokesperson Makenosi Maroo said.
Gauteng’s water crisis was discussed at a meeting on Friday night between water & sanitation minister Senzo Mchunu, co-operative governance & traditional affairs minister Thembi Nkadimeng, Rand Water and various Gauteng municipalities where conservation was debated and management plans demanded.
Due to the lack of concrete plans by municipalities, Mchunu directed Rand Water and his department to meet in the coming week with technical officials from all municipalities to develop solutions.