Please find attached soundbite by Stephen Moore MP.
– Joburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni lose 1-billion liters of clean water a day
– Water throttling, restrictions and constitution issues leave communities dry
– Only the DA has a plan to get water into taps, with your vote, on Wednesday
Water-shedding has arrived in Gauteng. Communities across Johannesburg and Tshwane are already going without water as failing municipalities deliberately restrict supply to prevent their reservoirs from running dry.
This morning the DA has received confirmation that Rand Water is water-throttling Johannesburg, as the City appears to have exceeded its license.
It is now unequivocal: Unless Gauteng voters choose change on Wednesday, we risk allowing water-shedding and water-outages to become the next permanent feature of our daily lives.
Not only is water treatment collapsing, as we see under the ActionSA-ANC leaders in Tshwane, but water storage is in a dangerous place too, in Johannesburg particularly. This is what we are left to endure under failing ANC-ActionSA leaders.
The latest Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) dashboard, released on 30 October, reveals the frightening state of Gauteng’s water supply as the province heads into the hottest months of the year.
While the department reports overall Rand Water reservoir storage of 31.1%, against a target of 60%, the figures for the four main strategic supply systems paint an even more disturbing picture:
– Eikenhof: 7%
– Zwartkopjes: 16%
– Palmiet: 28%
– Mapleton: 34%
When their different storage capacities are taken into account, these four main systems are collectively only approximately 26% full.
It is deeply concerning that Eikenhof has just 7% of its storage capacity remaining, but it feeds several vulnerable Johannesburg water networks, including the notorious Commando system, which supplies the Crosby, Brixton and Hursthill reservoir complexes.
These reservoirs serve communities including Westbury, Coronationville, Sophiatown, Westdene, Melville, Mayfair, Claremont, Brixton and surrounding areas – the very communities that have been protesting repeatedly because they cannot get reliable water.
Eikenhof also supports other parts of Johannesburg, including sections of Soweto, Randburg, Roodepoort and Lenasia.
Many families have already endured days, and in some cases weeks, without reliable water, which the DA cannot accept as the “new normal” for Johannesburg.
The reservoirs are supposed to provide a buffer when pumping is interrupted or demand increases. Without that buffer, a power failure, burst pipe or surge in consumption can quickly leave communities further down the network without water.
Johannesburg Water has confirmed that it is deliberately reducing water flows and pressure across numerous supply areas.
Tshwane is restricting supply to different reservoirs overnight, and has been running restrictions over multiple days.
Whatever name the municipalities give it, this is effectively “water-shedding.”
This is in addition to Tshwane’s disastrous water contamination issue, including hundred of gastrointestinal infections.
The hard truth for the ANC-ActionSA leaders, for which they have no answers, is that Gauteng is not simply running out of water, but the municipalities are losing extraordinary volumes of the water they already receive.
The latest DWS figures expose the scale of the failure:
– Tshwane: Under ActionSA Mayor Nasiphi Moya and her ANC and EFF partners, non-revenue water has risen from 40% to 46% in one year. Approximately 35% of its water is physically lost through leaks and infrastructure failures.
– Ekurhuleni: Under its ANC-led administration, non-revenue water has increased from 28.9% to 35.1% over the past year. Almost a quarter of the water entering its network is physically lost.
– Johannesburg: The latest published non-revenue water figure is a staggering 49.8%, in February, but he DWS dashboard still reflects no updated figure since then, assumedly because ANC Mayor Dada Morero’s administration stopped providing this information because the situation has deteriorated even further?
Our calculations indicate that Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni are collectively losing approximately one billion litres of treated water every day through physical losses.
They are losing almost four times as much water through leaking infrastructure as the amount by which they exceed their temporary supply limits. In other words, they are losing four times as much as they need to save, to secure the system.
These are indicative estimates, and recovering lost water will take time. But they demonstrate just how much difference proper infrastructure maintenance could make. This is the DA’s offer, to end this chaos. DA Mayors in these Metros can get this done, and start turning this around.
Human life, and the entire economy, healthcare, education – these are all at serious risk when reliable water and sanitation fail.
Without water, sanitation fails. Hygiene deteriorates. Disease becomes a greater risk. And lives can be endangered.
Yet the ANC-ActionSA-EFF Metro governments in Gauteng appear increasingly resigned to the situation.
Instead of fixing the underlying failures, they are restricting supply and telling residents to use less water.
The DA stands ready to meet this moment. Gauteng needs an emergency programme to repair leaks, restore ageing infrastructure, protect municipal water revenue for water services, and work directly with Rand Water to stabilise supply.
Only the DA can and will do that, with competent technical officials, maintenance of infrastructure and reliably treated water supply, water will once again be an essential service.
Gauteng cannot survive another five years of ANC, ActionSA and EFF-led decline.
Coalitions of chaos that in different municipalities across Gauteng include the ANC, EFF, PA, ActionSA and a variety of micro-parties, have given up on delivering running water, or delivering clean water when it does run.
On Wednesday, 4 November, stop this water chaos in Gauteng by using your vote. Vote to end the chaos of water shedding in Gauteng.
Vote DA on all ballots, so that together we can turn this around.