• Rand Water says it has completed its maintenance of Johannesburg’s most important water infrastructure points ahead of schedule.
• It says water will soon start trickling into taps across the city.
• Despite this, some high laying areas may have to wait a few days before systems are fully restored.

A week after first announcing its water shutdown, Rand Water says it has completed maintenance on critical water infrastructure across Johannesburg. According to a Twitter post on Friday morning, the system is now refilling and citizens can expect water to return to taps in short order.

Maintenance initially began on Tuesday 11th July, when pumping stations were shut down. Reservoirs were filled to capacity ahead of time and taps only began running dry on Wednesday morning. Most areas in Johannesburg, from Northcliff to Soweto and many in between were affected by the water shutdown in some capacity.

The utility then began work at the Eikenhof and Zwartkopjes pumping stations as well as the Vereeniging and Zuikerbosch Water Treatment Plants. Maintenance was completed almost 10 hours ahead of schedule according to a communication Rand Water issued on Thursday evening.

At that time Rand Water said, “Water will therefore start flowing by this evening as opposed to tomorrow morning.”

It had already completed maintenance at the Zwartkopjes station, and the Vereeniging and Zuikerbosch treatment facilities, with only the Eikenhoff station remaining. It seems Eikenhoff’s maintenance has already been completed as of Friday morning.

However, as previously stated, some areas will take a few days to fully restore.

“Customers are further notified that, since the reservoirs have run empty in some areas, the recovery of high lying areas can take several days to be fully restored,” Rand Water explained.

The return of water to the taps will be a sigh of relief for Johannesburg’s residents which have dealt with a weeklong water outage as well as the return of Stage 6 loadshedding.

South Africa’s power utility says that Stage 6 will continue into the weekend, allowing for crucial maintenance to be performed and for it to replenish its diesel and water supplies. The grid remains unstable, with Stage 8 still a real possibility if further breakdowns occur.

[Image – Photo by Sasikan Ulevik on Unsplash]