Rand Water has suggested that towns adopt water limitations through their bylaws and maintain proper monitoring of their implementations in response to the rising water demand.
The body stated that the issue of excessive water usage and the multiple calls to action for municipalities and consumers to save water are of the utmost significance.
Since the beginning of spring, Rand Water’s bulk water provision to municipalities has grown from an average of 4,300 million litres per day to 4,900 million litres per day, according to Rand Water spokesman Makenosi Maroo.
“Rand Water serves roughly 17 million residents in communities. The average daily water use per person in Gauteng is almost 300 litres, compared to the global average of 173 litres.
“This is in light of Rand Water over-abstracting or exceeding their water abstraction license by 400 million cubic meters per year,” Maroo added.
Rand Water has enforced a 30% decrease in water supply to preserve the system’s integrity and provide continuous water supply, according to Maroo, so that there is sufficient water in the reservoirs to mitigate, among other things, erratic supply.
Despite this, according to Maroo, water use continues to increase, and reservoir levels continue to fall as a result of this.
Rand Water will further implement flow control management of its reservoirs to prevent reservoir depletion and a catastrophic system failure.
“This move will ensure that Rand Water has complete control over water supply and no longer relies on users to cut consumption. “Flow control will be implemented at 20:00 on 14 October 2022 until the system recovers,” Maroo explained.
Many regions within the following municipalities may experience intermittent water service:
- City of Johannesburg
- City of Ekurhuleni
- City of Tshwane
- Rand West Local Municipality
- Mogale City Local Municipality
- Rustenburg Local Municipality
“We additionally advocate a prohibition on the use of sprinkler systems for watering lawns, as well as the use of hosepipes to wash automobiles and clean pavements,” Maroo stated.