Against a challenging backdrop of high – and rising – water demand, illegal connections, nonpayment for water, servitude encroachments and aging infrastructure, Johannesburg Water is happy with the progress it is making on its intervention programmes to ensure the City of Johannesburg’s (CoJ’s) water supply.

Recently, Johannesburg Water has attracted significant public criticism, with many raising concern over the sustainability of the city’s water security as residents face frequent water outages, often for days or weeks at a time.

Discussing the turnaround plan underway, the utility’s achievements over the past year and its plans for the next year, Johannesburg Water MD Ntshavheni Mukwevho told media at an editors’ roundtable on Tuesday that the entity faces many challenges.

These include nonrevenue water of 46.2% – against a target of 35% – which comprises commercial losses of 9.7%, unbilled/unmetered consumption of 11.7% and physical losses of 24.8%.

Further exacerbating the challenges are vandalism and theft of assets, along with illegal connections and significant encroachment on its servitudes, which make it difficult for the utility to access its pipeline in the event of leaks or maintenance. In one such example, Johannesburg Water found 280 residences built over its bulk pipeline in Protea Glen.

A high rate of urban migration and an increase in water demand, along with significantly low payment levels – 76.1% against the sustainable level of 83%, which poses financial risk to the organisation – places strain on the entity’s infrastructure.

Johannesburg Water distributes, stores and supplies about 1.75-billion litres a day of potable drinking water through its network of 12 520 km of water pipes, 129 reservoirs and towers and 37 water pump stations to residents of the CoJ.

Since 2001, water demand has increased from 1.1-billion litres a day to 1.8-billion litres a day currently – this needs to be reduced to 1.5-billion litres a day by the end of the year. By September 2025, there will be further reductions.

Another challenge Johannesburg Water is working on is its noncompliance with licence conditions at its wastewater treatment works – 76.10% compliance against a target of 90%, Mukwevho outlined in a presentation to media.

Johannesburg Water collects 819 megalitres of wastewater a day, conveyed through 11 933 km of sewer pipes and 38 sewer pump stations, treating the water at six wastewater treatment plants with a combined capacity of 1 043 megalitres a day.

Further, with a total infrastructure backlog of R26.91-billion and a planned ten-year R32-billion investment strategy, the group, in collaboration with National Treasury and the trading services reform, is also working on solutions to fund its extensive infrastructure programmes.

INTERVENTIONS

Johannesburg Water had tabled several interventions under its water demand management programme, aiming to get the utility back on track and mitigate the increasingly frequent water outages, Mukwevho commented.

This includes a continuous mass disconnection programme, as illegal connections start tapping into bulk water supply, with the bylaw enforcement done in collaboration with the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department.

In the current financial year, Johannesburg Water disconnected 11 752 illegal connections and customer meter bypasses, using internal and external resources.

Also serving as a credit control and revenue enhancement measure, Johannesburg Water is reviewing cash collection improvement options, as well as testing a tamper-proof restricting device.

Johannesburg Water is also repairing and rehabilitating 42 reservoirs, with 22 reservoirs prioritised and issued to consultants for scoping and design.

The procurement of a panel of contractors is in progress with the intention to start repairs in the current financial year, likely in February.

Another intervention is the repair or replacement of zonal bulk meters, with 239 zonal bulk flow meters identified as critical and requiring rehabilitation.

The plan is to rehabilitate all zonal meters by the end of the 2024/25 financial year and, to date, 66% of zonal meters have been repaired and are operational.

An extensive active/passive leak detection programme is underway, with the aim of surveying 10 000 km of the 12 500 km water pipeline network a year.

The utility fell short of its target in the current financial year to date, with only 3 143 km having been surveyed, however, 669 burst pipes, 1 929 leaking meters, 116 leaking valves and 94 leaking hydrants have been reported and repaired.

Water pipe replacements also form part of the interventions. While investment in water pipe replacements should amount to R1.09-billion a year to meet the pipe renewal target of 1.5%, this target has not been met over the past 10 years owing to funding limitations.

In 2023/24, 17 km of pipes were replaced against a target of 16 km. In the current financial year, just under 5 km had been replaced against the 15 km planned for the year, with a critical need to increase scale and pace.

“While the pipe replacement currently only covers about 17 km a year, we are planning to ramp up to an average of 100 km a year in the next five years, with more than 560 km [set to be] replaced across the city [in this period],” he said, pointing to similar ambitions for the sewer network.

The entity is further reviewing options to improve its wastewater compliance, which will include increasing capacity and enhancing operational efficiency.

Meanwhile, as part of an aggressive strategy, Johannesburg Water is refurbishing the CoJ’s 730 existing pressure management zones. To date, 220 (30%) have been completed, with a target of 100% completion by March.

The group further plans to install 35 advanced pressure management systems by June 2026. In the 2023/24 financial year, 15 pressure management zones were installed with the advanced pressure management system.

Further, the utility is embarking on retrofitting and removal of wasteful devices and installing prepaid meters.

The CoJ has about 600 000 domestic consumer meters that must be replaced as and when required to reduce apparent water losses. This is being done on a continuous basis.

In addition, 1 500 large consumer meters are targeted for advance metering infrastructure (AMI) to reduce apparent losses. The project for the replacement of the metering infrastructure and installation of AMI technology is at procurement stage, with the intention to award the contract before the end of the current financial year in June 2025.

Johannesburg Water is also upgrading its reservoir storage. The entity’s standard requires a minimum of 24 hours storage for its 95 reservoirs and 4 hours for its 34 water towers – and in many areas it has.

However, this is fragmented as, while the combined storage is 27 hours above the minimum standards, there are water districts where the storage is below minimum, including Bryanston, Hurst Hill, Erand tower and reservoir water districts and President Park.

About 27 reservoirs have been planned for construction in the next three to five years, with one reservoir and two towers already in the construction stage, to mitigate this.

Nine reservoirs and towers are in the procurement process, with construction to start in the new financial year, while 15 reservoirs are in the planning stage and will come onstream within the next five years.

“These will provide an additional 514 megalitres of storage capacity and provide additional 26% (an additional seven hours) at the current level of demand. The programme will cost R371-million in the 2025/26 financial year.”

FUNDING CONSTRAINTS

Johannesburg Water’s assets have a current replacement cost of about R125-billion, however, the bulk of its assets will be used for many years.

The group has a clear ten-year plan, however, a lot of its current focus is on assets that have a remaining life of less than five years.

“We are required to replace our assets at a renewal rate of about 2% a year, which we struggled with. The issue of underinvestment [owing to historic underfunding] is what resulted in the backlog that we ended up having,” said Mukwevho, noting a total infrastructure backlog of R26.91-billion and a renewal rate of 0.9% with current funding allocations.

Breaking down the utility’s backlog, he indicated a total network backlog of R21.9-billion, which comprises R3.3-billion for water mains replacement, R3.7-billion sewer mains replacement and a water and sewer capacity upgrade backlog of R14.9-billion.

Johannesburg Water’s total wastewater treatment works backlog reached R5.05-billion, comprising R3.8-billion for capacity upgrades and R1.25-billion for equipment replacement.

With 26% of the asset base having a remaining useful life of 0 to 10 years, an annualised investment of R3.1-billion a year is required over the next ten years for capital replacement and renewal.

Johannesburg Water has a ten-year R32.5-billion investment plan, comprising R10.61-billion (33%) for upgrading and renewal of infrastructure; R1.9-billion (6%) for operations and maintenance; R3.23-billion (10%) for new infrastructure and R9.6-billion (30%) for bulk wastewater.

The renewal of infrastructure will assist in improving the infrastructure failure rate that has led to high water losses.

Johannesburg Water plans to allocate R4-billion to support the water demand management strategy, with 64% to be spent in the first four years.

“For the first three years, we are looking at [spending] R6-billion of that R32-billion.”

The water utility’s turnaround plan, which includes reforms to ensure that water revenue is ringfenced and reinvested back into the water function and provides Johannesburg Water with full accountability for revenue billing for all its customers, contains several strategy shifts on cash collections, amendments to responsibilities in the billing cycle and increasing the yearly capital budget to R3-billion by 2025/26, from R1-billion in 2023/24.

“We need to be able to average our annual capital investment at a level of just above R3-billion,” he explained.

This will enable Johannesburg Water to increase its investment programme in accordance with its financial capacity and cash flows, as well as undertake structured and project-related borrowing through CoJ’s Treasury and pursue alternative funding options.

“There is a need to look beyond the existing funding models to realistically reduce the infrastructure backlog. In the past, we were not investing at the rate that we should, and hence this turnaround plan outlines the need to approach things differently.”

There is a need to pursue partnerships with the private sector.

Johannesburg Water is currently investigating the possibility of using performance-based contracts to implement some of the projects, especially nonrevenue water programmes, engaging National Treasury through its City Support Programme and the Government Technical Advisory Centre.

A procurement process for a transactional adviser is at an advanced stage with the intention to appoint by December 2024.

“This is what is going to help us to move in a new direction where we need to be investing at the pace and scale that is required.”