While the Laudium reservoir was said to be on the way to recovery in terms of water levels, the reservoir in Atteridgeville was yesterday still below average levels, according to the City of Tshwane.
This was as affected residents continued to express their frustration on social media over lack of running water due to Rand Water’s 37 days maintenance work in Gauteng.
For the past few days residents in the Pretoria east suburbs went without running water and depended on roving water tankers.
Municipal spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the City was pleased that water supply had been restored to the majority of areas after a period of about five days of taps running dry.
“Tshwane has observed a gradual, but impressive improvement to the reservoir levels in a few areas where supply is yet to be restored,” he said.
Bokaba, however, said it was important to note that Tshwane, like other metros in Gauteng, receives 79% of its bulk water supply from Rand Water’s two booster pumping stations, Mapleton and Palmiet.
“Rand Water has to first replenish its own reservoirs fed from the Mapleton and Palmiet systems before they can begin to distribute water to their municipal customers,”he said.
He said the process could take up to two weeks for the network to fully recover.
“This, however, doesn’t imply that water supply will be restored in two weeks’ time,” he said.
He said areas that were still without water would continue to be serviced by water tankers coordinated through the affected ward councillors.
“The City is aware of some areas that are supplied by the Palmiet system, such as Atteridgeville, including Kalafong Hospital and surrounding areas, that are still without water, and is providing tankers to mitigate the water outage,” he said.
He further pleaded with residents in the low-lying areas to use water sparingly when the supply was restored, to allow our bulk water system and reservoirs to recover quickly.
“The City apologises for the inconvenience caused by this planned water supply interruption,” he said.
Water supply has been restored to areas fed from Rand Water’s Mapleton system after water utility’s infrastructure maintenance work on the facility was completed.
The maintenance work took three days and five hours starting from July 26 and completed on Monday, resulting in water outages in various parts of Tshwane.
Bokaba said: “During that period, there was no pumping to the Mapleton system. This left various areas in Regions 2, 3 and 6 without water, compelling the city to dispatch water tankers to the affected areas.”
Pretoria News