Planned Joburg water outage to go ahead, impact might be felt for two weeks

Johannesburg residents are urged to prepare for a planned 58-hour water outage and have been warned the impact might be felt for up to two weeks in some areas. 

According to Rand Water, maintenance will be undertaken to replace multiple valves at the Vereeniging water treatment plant, Eikenhof booster pumping station and Zuikerbosch water treatment plant.

The last part of the project will involve working on electrical boards at Lethabo pumping station.

The 58-hour project will start at 7pm on Tuesday and continue until 5am on Friday. Some residents within the Rustenburg municipality, Mogale City municipality, and the Rand West municipality will experience intermittent water supply during the implementation of the project.

“The maintenance is to provide a window period for interventions that cannot be executed while the plant is operational. The benefit is to upgrade the infrastructure, improve its reliability and keep it functioning optimally and improve its reliability.

“Recovery can take between five days and 14 days after the supply has been fully restored.

“Johannesburg Water will provide stationery tankers in critical areas like hospitals, clinics, municipal offices, schools and police stations. There will also be tankers across the suburbs that will be affected. Roaming water trucks will be dispatched too,” said Johannesburg Water. 

Residents are urged to start storing water before the shutdown to reduce the impact on reservoirs and towers. 

Consumers are urged to not leave their taps open during the outage.

“Often this air gets into the water flow from the utility source. The water meter registers the volume of water that passes through it, which includes air, as it cannot differentiate between the two, and you will end up paying for more water than you actually used,” said Johannesburg Water. 

It has also made a plea for geysers to be switched off during the period. 

Areas that will be affected include Randburg, Roodepoort, Johannesburg central, Ennerdale, Southdale and Soweto.

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