Water consumption across Gauteng’s metropolitans declined week-on-week; however, the volumes remain above the required water-use efficiency targets, with yearly allocation by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), at the current consumption rates, set to be exceeded by 15%.

This threatens the sustainability of the Integrated Vaal River System (IVRS) and increases the likelihood of further restrictions on the system, according to the Gauteng Water Security Dashboard.

The weekly dashboard published by the multistakeholder platform for a Water Secure Gauteng regularly shows that the Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane metropolitan municipalities, as well as Emfuleni municipality, continue to consume more water than their water-use efficiency targets.

The combined use was 493-million litres a day – an overall 15% above the Project 1600 water-use efficiency targets.

Water consumption in the City of Johannesburg was 1 646-million litres a day – 290-million litres above its target of 1 356-million litres a day.

Consumption in the City of Ekurhuleni was 1 057-million litres, 35-million litres above its target of 1 022-million, while the City of Tshwane was using 855-million litres a day, 131-million litres above its daily target of 666-million litres.

Emfuleni consumed 303-million litres, 64-million litres a day over its target of 239-million litres.

Meanwhile, the overall storage of the four main strategic Rand Water reservoirs, namely Palmiet, Mapleton, Eikenhof and Zwartkopjies, has recovered since the outages over a week ago related to power failures. However, at an overall 40%, it has not yet recovered to the required levels.

The overall target reservoir storage level is 60%, at which point the system has sufficient pressure to feed the entire area, and water outages are less likely.

The dashboard indicated that the water storage level of Palmiet was at 50%, Mapleton at 47%, Eikenhof at 40% and Zwartkopjies at 32%.

Further, the IVRS system currently has a storage level of 84.6%, up from levels of 83.6% recorded on February 10. Should this dip below 60%, restrictions will be imposed.

The Vaal dam increased to more than 70% last week, up from 61.7% in the preceding week.