Yesterday morning at 09:06, a total power supply failure occurred at Rand Water’s Mapleton Booster Pump Station. This station is supplied by a City of Ekurhuleni substation that is fed from the Eskom grid. The fault finding confirmed that the original outage occurred in the supply from Eskom where there was vandalism on their Mapleton line.
The Mapleton Booster Pump Station is important because it supplies various Rand Water reservoirs that in turn supply the City of Tshwane, particularly in the southern and eastern areas.
The original estimated time of repair was 23:00 last night, which would have allowed for pumping to restart during the night and would have prevented any serious worry about water levels at water reservoirs. However, due to wet weather and criminals opportunistically vandalising the network, the power restoration was delayed until 06:00 this morning.
We have confirmation that Eskom restored its supply this morning and that supply was restored to the Mapleton Substation at 07:30. The City of Ekurhuleni has begun taking the load. Thereafter, Rand Water will take the load and begin pumping.
We will continue monitoring this situation, however, we need to ask residents to please use water cautiously today. Please remember that the City is still under Level 2 water restrictions, and we need residents to assist us to stretch the available supply until fresh water starts flowing again from Rand Water’s Mapleton Booster Pump Station.
I would like to show my appreciation for the teams from Eskom and our fellow municipality, the City of Ekurhuleni, who have worked hard on this matter through the night.
I will provide a further update once we have confirmed that the water supply is restored, or if there are further challenges.