NOTE: Article first appeared on The Citizen website on September 16, 2014.
Water supply has been sporadic or non-existent in parts of Johannesburg and the West Rand over the past two days.
Democratic Alliance ward councillor Amanda Forsythe received calls from residents reporting “ first low water pressure and then others saying they had completely ran out of water”.
Forsythe contacted Johannesburg Water, who informed her that the Rand Water reservoirs had ran out of water due to an extensive power outage.
Johannesburg Water spokesperson, Justice Mohale said: “The interruption was caused by the power outage in the Eikenhof area, which resulted in Rand Water unable to pump water from its Eikenhof Pumping station to the Meredale Reservoir, which supplies Joburg Water.”
Affected areas included the south-western part of Johannesburg and northern suburbs including Emmarentia, Greenside, Melville and Parktown. Restoration of water supply began yesterday afternoon but because of the size of the reservoirs, it took a few hours. Forsythe said water was restored to most residents by 10pm last night, but that there were some glitches.
“Some people had water on for a while last night and then this morning had nothing, but I believe water has been fully restored now,” Forsythe said.
Considering the extent of the water interruption, Forsythe said: “Those reservoirs are huge. The power outage must have lasted a day or so. They even have back-up generators, but those also ran out of power because of the high demand for water.”
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