MALAIKA MAHLATSI | City of Joburg must deal with water crisis as millions of litres a day are lost and not billed

Over the past few weeks, residents of various suburbs across Johannesburg have been experiencing water outages, with some lasting several days and even weeks. The explanation given by the leadership of the City of Johannesburg is that water shortages are the result of power cuts which affected electricity supply in the city and the Emfuleni local municipality to the south of Johannesburg.

Emfuleni and Johannesburg’s City Power supply electricity to the recently refurbished Eikenhof pump station that is managed by Rand Water. The bulk water utility also issued a statement warning about high water consumption in Gauteng municipalities, with particular reference to the cities of Tshwane and Johannesburg.

The utility is supplying water at maximum capacity as things stand, but the over-consumption by municipalities is fast decreasing the availability of the resource, risking a system collapse that will have devastating consequences for various municipalities across Gauteng, the North West and Free State.

While Johannesburg Water has stated that it is prioritising water infrastructure... the reality is that these are not new commitments.

Listening to Johannesburg mayor, Dada Morero, explaining the situation a few days ago, one would think that the crisis of water in Gauteng is fundamentally about its excessive consumption by households and businesses. While it is true that over-consumption is a serious challenge, there’s an even bigger problem that the municipality is not communicating — that of non-revenue water. Non-revenue water refers to water that is supplied by a water utility (in this case, Rand Water) that doesn’t generate revenue due to losses, theft or unbilled consumption.

According to recent data by the national department of water and sanitation, Gauteng’s system input volume (water treated by Rand Water and municipalities) is more than 1.5-billion litres daily. However, of this number, only 902-million litres are accounted for/billed. This means that more than 660-million litres of the province’s water is lost or constitutes non-revenue water.

These are numbing figures — and are possibly understated. Our province’s non-revenue water stands at 46.37% annually, meaning that almost half of the water that we receive from the bulk water utility is lost before it even reaches our taps. The financial loss is incalculable. Gauteng has the largest non-revenue water in a country that is already battling physical water scarcity.

As stated, non-revenue water results from human activities that include the nonpayment of water by consumers, leaks, infrastructure vandalism and theft and illegal connections. The leaks are mainly due to poor maintenance and inadequate investment in water infrastructure by municipalities.

While Johannesburg Water has stated that it is prioritising water infrastructure, saying in September that leaking reservoirs were allocated to a panel of consultants for design and scoping to start repairing them in the current financial year and that the utility is embarking on water pipe replacements to reduce the water lost through pipe leaks, the reality is that these are not new commitments.

Various administrations have made the same commitments. In almost every state of infrastructure report of the municipality dating back more than a decade, leaking reservoirs are identified as a serious challenge. Furthermore, every annual budget of the municipality over the same period underinvests in water infrastructure despite the city being the fastest-growing in the country.

The implication is that with every financial year, there is under-budgeting for water infrastructure maintenance by the municipality, and even more insufficient allocations for the construction of new water infrastructure. This is happening even as the national government has repeatedly provided grants to municipalities to resolve the deterioration in our water infrastructure.

Until the financial mismanagement in the municipality and its reporting entities is addressed, the problem will inevitably persist, plunging us into a deeper crisis than we are already in. Addressing the problem needs political will. It needs a government that cares.

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