Pretoria - Water has finally been restored in Soshanguve, bringing much relief among residents who were forced to live for three days without water.
On Friday, residents woke up to taps that had run dry without prior notification from either the City of Tshwane or Rand Water.
Disgruntled residents, who queued for water from roaming tankers, expressed their frustration that they found it difficult to live without water.
The City was flooded with complaints from rate-payers who wanted to know about the reasons behind the unplanned water cuts in their area.
To salvage the situation, the City dispatched roaming water tankers to supply residents in the affected areas with water.
The water utility initially refused to take blame for the water outage after the municipality established that Soshanguve Block L reservoir had no inflow supply.
However, Rand Water eventually identified a fault in a valve on the outlet of Hartebeesthoek reservoir.
While confronted with complaints of water cuts, the entity first said the municipality needed to clarify to residents why there was suddenly a failure in water supply.
“Soshanguve was not affected by the Palmiet’s maintenance work that was done this weekend. All reservoirs supplying the City of Tshwane are above 70% full. City of Tshwane customers should contact the City for more clarity on the reasons for the challenges affecting Soshanguve,” it said.
The entity had scheduled a 12-hour maintenance of its delivery valve at Palmiet booster station on Friday.
Rand Water, however, changed its tune by owning up to the scarcity of water that hit the township.
“After investigating water supply challenges experienced in Soshanguve, Rand Water discovered that a valve on the outlet of Hartebeesthoek reservoir had failed in a closed position. The valve failure resulted in very low water supply to Soshanguve as it was supplied only through the bypass valve,” it said in a statement.
It further apologised "profusely" to residents, saying technicians have repaired the faulty valve.
“Water supplies have been restored and Soshanguve residents will be receiving water as soon as pipelines are full. Rand Water apologises for the inconvenience it has caused to our consumers,” it said.
Responding to residents’ frustration on Sunday, the City said: “We have been open and transparent about this crisis. Our customers have endured a miserable three days without water and anger is directed at us instead of the institution that’s responsible for this, which is Rand Water. Rand Water was supposed to hold a technical meeting with our officials at 10am this morning (Sunday). They postponed it until further notice pending additional investigations in their own network which is causing this low pressure situation.”
City’s spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said complaints by residents indicated that the Soshanguve Block L reservoir had run empty.
It later emerged that other reservoirs on the same supply line such as the Ga-Rankuwa Industrial, Mabopane Mega 55 and the Winterveldt reservoirs were also affected.
Mashigo said: “Preliminary investigations revealed that there was no inflow supply to the reservoir which was confirmed by the inlet pressure registering 0 bar. With the view of establishing the cause of the drop in the pressure, the reservoir inlet chamber was stripped and no possible restricting material was located.”
Pretoria News