The City of Tshwane has dispatched extra water tankers to areas in the City that have experienced water supply outages as a result of a system breakdown at Rand Water’s Palmiet pump station.
The water utility notified the City yesterday that the infrastructure failure has affected its station’s water pumping capacity and that it was only able to supply 55% of its normal daily water supply volume.
Rand Water has emphasized that, if the call to reduce water consumption is not heeded, there will not be sufficient water to supply municipalities and its reservoirs will run dry.
Mr Selby Bokaba, Director Communication from the City of Tshwane, in a statement issued on 06 July 2021, said the City’s water reservoir levels will also drop and ultimately run dry – a situation that will lead to inevitable water supply interruptions.
Mr Bokaba also said that in their quest to ensure that their residents get water, they procured 10 water tankers and dispatched them to parts of Region 4, south of the City, and they seem to be covering the area sufficiently.
The following suburbs have been affected by the outage, Olievenhoutbosch and extensions, Rua Vista Thatchfield, The Reeds, Kosmosdal, and portions of Louwlardia and Monavoni.
“An additional 10 water tankers have been dispatched to some parts of Region 1, north of the City, to supplement the 22 that was dispatched yesterday due to the size of the area, bringing the total number of water tankers to the affected areas in Region 1 to 32. The following areas are currently without water are Rosslyn , Soshanguve Block L, K, DD, M,UU and VV, Mabopane Block X, T, UX, V,B, M, E, S, D and A, Winterveldt and Ga-Rankuwa,” said Mr Bokaba.
Mr Bokaba said the current water outage experienced in Regions 1 and 4 is also caused by a breakdown at the Palmiet pump station, an infrastructure operated by Rand Water. He used the residents in Region 1 to desist from preventing tankers from drawing water from a fire hydrant at Odi, in Region 1.
“The layout of the Palmiet System process flow from Rand Water to the City of Tshwane two reservoirs, Brakfontein which supplies Region 4 and parts of Region 3, and Hartebeeshoek, supplying Region 1, which reservoirs are situated within the boundaries of Tshwane.
“Since the Hartebeeshoek Reservoir is at the tail end of the chain, less or no water is flowing to it in case of reduced flows from Rand Water – which is currently the case,” says Mr Bokaba.
He said residents of Tshwane must be aware that the system can only recover once the Rand Water system is back to full operation, or the situation will remain like this, or it might even get worse because the situation is beyond the City of Tshwane’s control.
