Joburg Water isolates 2 reservoirs as 'areas of concern' while system recovers from mass outage
The Linden 1 and Blairgowrie reservoirs were particularly hard hit by the Eikenhof pump station going offline earlier this week.
A water tanker stationed in Johannesburg to assist residents still reeling from a mass outage on 7 March 2024. Picture: X/@JHBWater
JOHANNESBURG - Johannesburg Water said while its systems were slowly recovering after widespread shortages during the week, it would still be a few days before supplies were fully restored in some areas.
Problems at one of City Power’s substations over the weekend and early in the week forced Rand Water's Eikenhof pump station offline, resulting in disruptions to the supply of water across the city.
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Johannesburg Water on Friday provided an update on the situation, during which the entity’s Logan Munsamy said things were looking up.
“In summary, the systems are showing signs of recovery. We've reconfigured systems, we've throttled outlets, we've done various interventions to make sure we get maximum flow into these reservoirs.”
He said the Linden 1 and Blairgowrie reservoirs were still “areas of concern”, though.
“Those two sites are interconnected. That means the Linden 1 reservoir in turn feeds the Blairgowrie reservoir. These two reservoirs are sitting in the highest point of the supply zone, meaning that you need excess pressure to boost water up to those two points.
“With the system currently filling and taking water into the various reservoirs, we are trying to reconfigure the systems, and the additional inflows from Rand Water will ensure that we manage to recover this reservoir over the next coming days.”
'NATURALLY CAUSED INCIDENT'
Speaking on the cause of the outage, contingency plans, the entity said the recent water problems in the city were out of their control.
“This particular incident, I mean it was lightning that struck a substation transformer. I think that certain things are naturally caused incidents that cause our system to go out of step.
“When it does, our contingency is to rebalance our systems, to reconfigure them, [and] to deploy water tankers as is practically possible where we can,” Munsamy said.