Rand Water supply problems affect Gauteng Residents

Sinbad said:
Occams razor. Lack of maintenance, lack of capacity planning.
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I cant argue against this, but even if they did plan for capacity and their maintenance were up to date, what user is that with no power? It would have been great if RW could rely on gravity alone to distribute water, but to purify, they would still need power.
 
OGroteKoning said:
I cant argue against this, but even if they did plan for capacity and their maintenance were up to date, what user is that with no power? It would have been great if RW could rely on gravity alone to distribute water, but to purify, they would still need power.
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Lack of contingency planning. Emergency generator maybe? Or was that stolen or sold?
 
Sinbad said:
Lack of contingency planning. Emergency generator maybe? Or was that stolen or sold?
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Lol at emergency generator... If you ever have an opportunity to visit any of the pumping stations, please go. You would be amazed! For RW to have a genny, they would need their own power station. Anything else is just too small and expensive to run and I am sure the public will bitch and moan of the price if water is suddenly linked to the price of diesel.
 
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Would love the opportunity to check it out. What kind of power are we talking anyway?
 
Sinbad said:
Would love the opportunity to check it out. What kind of power are we talking anyway?
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PM me on Monday and I will see if I can get some figures.

You can also Google "Rand Water Annual Report". They list their risks in the integrated reports as far as I know and Eskom is always a major risk.
 
OGroteKoning said:
There are many factors in play this time - the main being loss of power while excess demand from consumers. The most difficult one has always been demand. If excess demand happens in the very period of a shortage, RW needs all their pumping stations running at full blast to keep up. They can't do that if Eskom fails them.


Please find out if RW has ever had power outages as a result of load shedding. It is THE most essential service and I don't know if they were ever effected in this manner because of the necessity of water. Also, see my reply to Sinbad above.
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The excess demand story is BS. Much easier to blame the customer that your own incompetence. They are lying and will be exposed in due course. This the price SA pays for cadre deployment. Unfortunately in true cANCer style they will get away with it.
 
Vrotappel said:
The excess demand story is BS. Much easier to blame the customer that your own incompetence. They are lying and will be exposed in due course. This the price SA pays for cadre deployment. Unfortunately in true cANCer style they will get away with it.
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Did you even read my whole post? Did you see that I referred to a combination of the demand and power problems? If there was no power problem, I doubt there would have been any issues.
 
OGroteKoning said:
Lol at emergency generator... If you ever have an opportunity to visit any of the pumping stations, please go. You would be amazed! For RW to have a genny, they would need their own power station. Anything else is just too small and expensive to run and I am sure the public will bitch and moan of the price if water is suddenly linked to the price of diesel.
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Exactly, if they do have gens it's for safe system shutdown. Even Eskom stations run diesel gens to effect safe system shutdown in case of emergency, and some of those systems are water pumps to keep things cool. Shows how large the pumps are that you can't run them off the massive UPS systems they have in those stations.
 
OGroteKoning said:
Did you even read my whole post? Did you see that I referred to a combination of the demand and power problems? If there was no power problem, I doubt there would have been any issues.
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I disagree, even with power problems the issues escalated to unprecedented levels (worst in 110 years I believe). These things don't run dry in one day. The warning signs must have shown for at least a week. What was done about it? I hope the truth comes out.
 
Vrotappel said:
I disagree, even with power problems the issues escalated to unprecedented levels (worst in 110 years I believe). These things don't run dry in one day. The warning signs must have shown for at least a week. What was done about it? I hope the truth comes out.
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Somebody was too busy picking their nose....
 
Vrotappel said:
I disagree, even with power problems the issues escalated to unprecedented levels (worst in 110 years I believe). These things don't run dry in one day. The warning signs must have shown for at least a week. What was done about it? I hope the truth comes out.
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You are saying the same as I am yet you disagree. But it seems you have done some research already. Perhaps you know what the capacity is of RW reservoirs and what the daily supply of water is as well as the daily demand. Then you can determine what the "loss of supply for demand" was for the period Eskom failed again to supply power and this time to a life giving resource for which they supposedly undertook to never jeopardise.

1. Power problems prevent the pumping stations from getting water from RW resevoirs to the end user because they rely on power to do so. You can't have a builders warehouse genny pushing those pumping stations. They need serious power to supply for the demand.
2. The public started to prevent possible water shortages for them as individuals by filling tanks and whatever else and thereby increasing immediate demand. You can't blame them because of the lessons learnt from repeated Eskom failures.
3. I also heard that the heat had an influence with increased water demand. Pools, sprinkler systems and who knows what else people used to alleviate this.

What I am saying is that if you take the power problem out of the equation, there is little chance of RW not being able to supply for the demand even if the other two factors are still in play, simply because that is what RW cater for (with calculated reserve) as it was the case until now. When last have you heard of such a severe power issue and RW in the same sentence?

I will not propagate that RW is ahead of the game when it comes to maintenance, but you surely make it seem as if they are in the same state as Eskom. I also hope the truth comes out and I hope I don't have to eat my words, but I honestly doubt that I would have to.
 
So there's an article in the sunday times today. Claims that there are actually backup transformers for the pump station, but that station 1's backup has been broken for 10 months.
 
Sinbad said:
So there's an article in the sunday times today. Claims that there are actually backup transformers for the pump station, but that station 1's backup has been broken for 10 months.
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That's not good. But without power, even a new transformer is useless.
 
In certain areas here in Krugersdorp people has been without water for about 2 weeks now...
 
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