Johannesburg - The full might of the drought has hit Joburg with a vengeance.
Three water towers have run dry leaving entire suburbs in the north-western areas without water for almost three days.
To add to the crisis, major retail stores are running out of bottled drinking water.
The Brixton, Crown Gardens and South Hills water towers ran dry because of high consumption over the weekend, Joburg Water said this morning.
The utility said it started filling the Brixton tower at about 8am and would start with the Crown Gardens tower from about 11am.
Residents in these areas are in dire straits.
Ward 69 - Melville, Brixton, Auckland - committee member Rene van Niekerk says people are desperate.
“We have children, animals, old people and students in the middle of exams not being able to get water or flush toilets or bath. Joburg Water promised to send tankers, but we are still waiting. There’s absolute chaos in this area.
“People are going crazy. Students are crying because there’s no drinking water and they are in the middle of exams. We are in high 30º heat and there’s no relief coming.
“I went to Pick * Pay and Woolworths yesterday (on Wednesday) and drinking water was sold out,” said Van Niekerk on Thursday morning.
On Wednesday night, he said, they promised to send a tanker to Brixton.
“About 100 people gathered with buckets waiting for it to arrive, but it did not come.
“People were in tears - that’s how desperate they are,” he said.
“Now we can expect a sewage problem with blockages next,” he said.
Ward councillor Katja Naumann said she was desperate.
“It’s going for day three. There is absolutely no communication from Joburg.
“We have pupils writing matric. I don’t know how they are coping with bathing and flushing toilets. I have an old-age home where people are getting sick,” she said.
Joburg Water’s executive manager of communications, Hilgard Matthews, said high consumption had led the high-lying towers of Brixton and Crown Gardens to run dry.
“However, we are starting to fill the towers and everything should be back to normal within the next few hours,” he said.
Tankers have been sent to various places in Brixton, Greenside, Mayfair, Crosy, Coronationville, Rehana Moosa and Helen Joseph.
In the Crown Gardens tower area, tankers have been sent to Winchester Hills, Robertsham, Ormonde and Crown Gardens itself.
The South Hills tower was supplied directly by Rand Water, he said.
Yesterday, some Joburg schools sent pupils home because there was no water.
The Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality issued a red alert to residents, warning them to use water sparingly as many suburbs in and around Bedfordview and Germiston had experienced water shortages.
It warned that levels in the reservoirs supplying certain areas were at a critical level, which could lead to low water pressure.
“If the situation in all the areas above deteriorates further, the (Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality) will implement water-shedding measures and shut off supply from 10pm to 3pm,” the municipality warned on Tuesday.
And this disaster is one that could easily have been avoided, according to water expert Dr Anthony Turton in an analysis published this week in @Liberty - the policy bulletin of the Institute of Race Relations.
In a damning article, Turton said the water shortage is not simply the result of the drought.
“The water shortage is also an induced one. It stems from a lack of strategic planning, a loss of skills to transformation and the fact that poorly functioning waste-water treatment plants are spewing close on 4 billion litres of untreated or partially treated sewage into the country’s dams and rivers daily,” he said.
These sewage spills are the most serious of the problems.
“Just as a small volume of oil destroys the quality of a large volume of water, so a small source of persistent sewage has essentially the same effect.”
Sewage discharges are also driving the eutrophication of most major dams. Eutrophic water is characterised by the presence of high levels of nutrients, which in turn promote the growth of cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae.
The Star