Lightning strike impacts water supply in Johannesburg, causing frustration for residents
and |Published
Following two weeks of dry taps, City Power’s Eikenhof substation, which supplies the Eikenhof pump station with electricity, was again tripped by a suspected lightning strike in Soweto on Monday night at about 8pm.
The outage, which lasted for about two hours, affected several suburbs in the south, including Eldorado Park and Nancefield.
This is the second recent outage to plunge residents into a deep water crisis in which many of them have been stranded for several days on end without water.
This was confirmed by Johannesburg Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda on Monday at the scene in a short video posted on social media to update the residents.
The mayor and other city officials went to investigate the site and the source of the trip.
Gwamanda said they would provide a detailed report on Tuesday to determine the extent of the trip.
“We are waiting for a clear report from Joburg Water to give us a clear indication as to how it has affected the water supply. We will give you an update first thing in the morning on the disruptions,” he said.
He also pleaded with the residents to give them time to ensure that the outage was fixed.
The recent two-week water outage was due to three power failures at the pump station, of which the first one was caused by lightning damage at City Power’s Eikenhof substation that supplies the station with electricity.
The station was then unable to pump water for three days which resulted in the reservoir levels dropping.
Subsequently, a power feed that also went down took about two days to fix.
The City promised to attend to the matter and resolve it.
Also on Monday, Rand Water met with the executives mayors of various Gauteng metros to address high water consumption.
Rand Water stated that they were experiencing an upward trend in water consumption in most areas of the Gauteng metros.
According to its spokesperson Makenosi Maroo, Gauteng metros consume more than 75% of water products by Rand Water.
“To address the upward trend, Rand Water leadership under Rand Water Board chairperson Ramayeu Monyokolo is meeting with executive mayors of the Gauteng metros. To date, Rand Water has met with the executive mayors of Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg.
“The meetings with both mayors discussed initiatives by the technical teams to reduce consumption and pledged to drive the initiatives at that level. The executive mayors in Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni voiced their support for initiatives by the technical teams to reduce consumption and pledged to drive the initiatives at that level.
“The daily technical team meetings between Rand Water and Gauteng metros to discuss and implement technical solutions continue to take place. High water consumption by metros requires Rand Water to pump more to metros, and this depletes Rand Water’s storage.
“We will continue to engage the Gauteng Metros in efforts to reduce their water consumption and avert interrupted supply,” Maroo said.
Meanwhile, residents living in the west of Johannesburg have raised concerns about flooding caused by a faulty and damaged Rand Water line at a factory in Stormill, Roodepoort.
According to one of the residents, Hannes Stassen, they have reported this directly to Rand Water and to their ward councillor and yet the water keeps flowing, compromising their boundary wall and factory for six weeks.
“This has been going on for about six weeks now and our neighbour actually measured that roughly 50 000 litres a day is running down the storm-water drains.
“This has been a nightmare as we have to use back-up water causing diarrhoea.
“We had to dig a trench to try and divert water away from our factory but it is not helping at all anymore,” Stassen said.
In addition, Stassen said that as a community, they hope this can help them in getting some exposure and closure on this issue as Joburg Water have been urging residents to save water but yet they have huge amounts of water just flowing away wasted.
Independent Media sent an enquiry to Joburg Water and by the time of publication, no response was received.
The Star
nobukhosi.tshabalala@inl.co.za