City pulls out all stops to get water flowing
Supply restored to most affected areas
The City of Johannesburg says water will be restored to most areas affected by outages as a result of a substation that caught fire on Monday.
The fire at a substation in Eikenhof‚ south of Johannesburg‚ plunged parts of the city into darkness and interrupted water supplies to many areas.
“We are currently pumping water to our reservoirs. We have restored water to some areas‚ including Orlando‚” said MMC for environment and infrastructure Nico de Jager on Wednesday.
“We will have water restored to most‚ if not all‚ areas by 6pm [on Wednesday]‚ even if it is at a reduced rate.”
De Jager said a lot of work had gone into making sure power and water were restored in all affected areas since the substation caught fire.
“A lot of people have been working behind the scenes. When I went to the site yesterday [Tuesday]‚ there were about 40 people on site. Physical workers keep relieving each other because the work that goes into releasing transformers is immense.
“This has been amazing. The work that would have taken weeks to do‚ was done in 72 hours. This is because from July 1‚ at the start of the new financial year‚ we started spending money on refurbishing old transformers.”
He said the city was aiming at refurbishing 55 transformers by the end of the next financial year. “Some transformers are quite old.”
Meanwhile‚ the City of Tshwane confirmed Rand Water planned a shutdown of the water supply to Hartebeeshoek reservoir in Akasia‚ north of Pretoria‚ next week.
The shutdown – on September 5 from 6am to 6am the following morning – was “necessitated by the need to carry out emergency repairs on a damaged 1500mm diameter isolating valve at the reservoir”.
Reservoirs supplied by the Hartebeeshoek reservoir will be filled to capacity to ensure provision of water to residents during the shutdown period‚ the city said.
“However‚ residents are cautioned to use water sparingly to avoid the rapid drop in water level in the reservoir – a situation that will lead to service interruption.”
If there was an interruption‚ the following areas would be affected: GaRankuwa, GaRankuwa Industrial, Mabopane, Winterveld, Soshanguve, New Eersterust and Rosslyn.