Vaal Dam levels

lcbxx said:
There is a drought, yes, but the dam levels are being used as propaganda to drive up prices.
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No, the drought is being used to camouflage infrastructure failure.
JW even just admitted to it:

Johannesburg Water ‏@JHBWater 4m4 minutes ago
This is done also protect JW reticulation infrastructure from collapsing #Savewater #waterRestrictions ^H
 
Sinbad said:
No, the drought is being used to camouflage infrastructure failure.
JW even just admitted to it:

Johannesburg Water ‏@JHBWater 4m4 minutes ago
This is done also protect JW reticulation infrastructure from collapsing #Savewater #waterRestrictions ^H
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Agreed - your point is more specific.

To me it smacks of the same rhetoric spewed when everyone HAD to reduce electricity consumption immediately because of an imminent grid collapse, used to obfuscate failing infrastructure due to lack of maintenance and to drive up cost/kW. Curiously there is now an over-supply which will probably drive up prices again.
 
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Agent_Smith said:
I thought that it's pissing with rain in Gauteng? Our office in Meadowdale flooded the other day. Is it not raining in the right areas, just not enough yet to sort out the damn levels or is the rate of evaporation (and loss) exceeding the inflow (as Sinbad alluded to)?
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Basically any rain in Bedfordview and further north runs into the Limpopo and ultimately the Indian ocean.
Southwards, feeds the Vaal river, Orange river, and ends in the Atlantic ocean.
 
patrick123 said:
Basically any rain in Bedfordview and further north runs into the Limpopo and ultimately the Indian ocean.
Southwards, feeds the Vaal river, Orange river, and ends in the Atlantic ocean.
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Gauteng rain basically feeds into the barrage dam, not the river upstream of the vaal dam. You can see the effects of the recent weather on the graphs on reservoir.co.za - look at the barrage outflow.
 
Ah ok. I'll be the first to admit I'm not au fait with Gauteng's topography. Here's hoping that the rain arrives soon (in the right areas! :D )
 
Agent_Smith said:
I thought that it's pissing with rain in Gauteng? Our office in Meadowdale flooded the other day. Is it not raining in the right areas, just not enough yet to sort out the damn levels or is the rate of evaporation (and loss) exceeding the inflow (as Sinbad alluded to)?
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It is not raining nearly enough, flash floods for 30 minutes here and there. Even if the Vaal dam has the same rainfall as we are having in Gauteng, it won't do much more than keep the level nearly the same from day to day, at best.
 
So the levels are up a bit at least.

Vaal Dam
Level: 13.97
Volume: 718.9
Percentage: 27.5%
Flow: 18
Rainfall: 0.2
Last updates: 24 October 2016
 
Ho3n3r said:
I know the maintenance is bad and people waste a LOT of water, but it didn't help with the drought we've had over the last 1.5 years - last winter(coz it rarely rains here in the winter, which is normal), last summer and again this winter. It hasn't rained a lot at all.

I don't buy into it that we wouldn't still be a crisis even if the maintenance was up to scratch - although it doesn't help at all. The area mentioned which the dam feeds, is huge, and with no rain, it's gonna run empty sometime anyway.
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While the current crisis can be blamed on the severe drought, there is a large element of bad governance as well. Twenty years of municipal mismanagement has come home to roost, meaning that between 50% and 70% of our fresh water is being wasted through burst pipes, malfunctioning pumps, broken taps and reckless water use (the 'acceptable' global figure for non-revenue water is 30%). Adding to our water woes is an historical accumulation of bad waste-water treatment: fully half of our waste-treatment plants are operating below average standards and fully a third are critical. Fresh water is needed to flush out the pollution of raw sewage oozing into our dams and rivers, and a drought will concentrate effluent to dangerous levels.
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-06-25-water-shedding-feel-it-it-is-almost-here/
 
It's been raining almost every night over last week in the Gauteng east rand but they've all been at night.

Not a single drop during the day.

Bizarre.
 
Sinbad said:
Gauteng rain basically feeds into the barrage dam, not the river upstream of the vaal dam. You can see the effects of the recent weather on the graphs on reservoir.co.za - look at the barrage outflow.
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Thank you for this. I always thought the Barrage was Downstream - i.e. they open it up to take water out of the Vaal Dam, now add water. Things are a lot clearer now.
 
Milano said:
While the current crisis can be blamed on the severe drought, there is a large element of bad governance as well. Twenty years of municipal mismanagement has come home to roost, meaning that between 50% and 70% of our fresh water is being wasted through burst pipes, malfunctioning pumps, broken taps and reckless water use (the 'acceptable' global figure for non-revenue water is 30%). Adding to our water woes is an historical accumulation of bad waste-water treatment: fully half of our waste-treatment plants are operating below average standards and fully a third are critical. Fresh water is needed to flush out the pollution of raw sewage oozing into our dams and rivers, and a drought will concentrate effluent to dangerous levels.
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-06-25-water-shedding-feel-it-it-is-almost-here/
Click to expand...

I have to agree that it has fallen apart a LOT since I made the post that you quoted...
 
Sinbad said:
Gauteng rain basically feeds into the barrage dam, not the river upstream of the vaal dam. You can see the effects of the recent weather on the graphs on reservoir.co.za - look at the barrage outflow.
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And according to maps I've seen, the rain in Centurion in the Hennops leads to Hartebeestpoort dam.
 
zamedic said:
Thank you for this. I always thought the Barrage was Downstream - i.e. they open it up to take water out of the Vaal Dam, now add water. Things are a lot clearer now.
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Barrage is downstream of the vaal dam. The vaal dam basically controls flow into it. They open the barrage gates so as not to flood all the holiday homes along the river between the dam and the barrage ;)
 
Ho3n3r said:
I can't say that I know whether it supplies water to anybody, but if it does, it certainly isn't at the same rate of people that the Vaal dam does.
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The dam was originally designed for irrigation, which is currently its primary use, as well as for domestic and industrial use.
 
Sinbad said:
The dam was originally designed for irrigation, which is currently its primary use, as well as for domestic and industrial use.
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As an added bonus they pre-treated the water with fertilizer, by the smell of it anyways.
 
Drifter said:
As an added bonus they pre-treated the water with fertilizer, by the smell of it anyways.
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The dam has suffered from a hypertrophic state since the early 1970s. Mismanagement of waste water treatment from urban zones within the Hartbeespoort Dam catchment area is largely to blame, having distorted the food web with over 280 tons of phosphate and nitrate deposits.[4]

Yup. Loads of schidt in there.
 
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