South Africa: Water and Sanitation on national water levels

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The Department of Water and Sanitation’s weekly status of dams report demonstrate that the country’s water levels are on a continual decrease due to the lack of rains in the last few weeks. This week, the overall national storage capacity of the country’s reservoirs is at 92.3%, a tiny reduction from last week’s 92.4%, and a significant improvement from last year’s 81.5%.

The biggest Water Supply System, Integrated Vaal River System (IVRS) with 14 dams across four provinces dipped marginally from 99.2% last week to 98.9% this week. Some of the Water Supply Systems that have declined are; Bloemfontein from 98.2% last week to 98.1% this week. Both Crocodile East and West experienced a reduction by the tiniest margin from 100.2% to 100.0% and 98.1% to 97.7% respectively. 

Continuing with the downward movement in as far as Water Supply System are concerned were; Luvuvhu from 100.9% to 100.8%, Umhlathuze from 100.1% to 100.0%, Polokwane from 101.3% to 100.9%, and Umgeni dropped from 98.1% to 97.8%.

On the positive note, Algoa Water Supply System with dams supplying water to Nelson Mandela Bay Metro is among the systems that have recorded slight improvement, increasing slightly from 15.0% last week to 15.1% this week. However, the system remains low and dams are still struggling to recover from the persisting drought in the area. Butterworth also moved up somewhat from 99.7% to 100.0% and Cape Town also increased from 75.3% to 76.3%. 

Seven out of nine provinces have recorded downwards movements in water levels namely, Free State from 99.7% to 99.6%, KwaZulu-Natal from 88.7% to 88.5%, Limpopo from 88.0% to 87.7%, Gauteng from 100.2% to 99.6%, Mpumalanga from 94.8% to 94.5%, North West from 80.0% to 79.6% and Northern Cape  from 109.3% to 106.9%.

On the improvement segment is Western Cape which increased from 63.9% to 64.6% and Eastern Cape from 69.5% to 70.2%.

The Gariep, which is South Africa's largest dam, was 97.4% last week and is sitting at 97.7% this week. While Sterkfontein Dam, a reserve dam within IVRS, is at 100.2%, showing a minor decrease from last week’s water level of 100.3%. Vaal Dam has declined from 100.9% to 100.1%.

The Department of Water and Sanitation continues to urge the public to save and use water sparingly as we remain a water scarce country.

Residents in the city of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni are warned to expect an 87-hour approximately five days water outage this week due to maintenance work on key pipelines in Gauteng. Maintenance commences on Friday 19 August 2022 at 09:30 until 13:00 on Tuesday 23 August 2022. 

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Department of Water and Sanitation, Republic of South Africa.