The City of Johannesburg has imposed level one water restrictions to curtail water use by residents, considering a consistent decline in Gauteng’s water levels over the past months.

Hot temperatures and no rain over the past few months have affected the state of the province’s water resources, the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) said on Thursday.

The department issued a weekly dam levels report, which found that Gauteng’s provincial average water level had dropped to 86.1% this week, compared with 87.1% last week.

This is a sharp decline compared with the same period last year when water levels in Gauteng were at 97.7%.

The DWS explained that nearly all the dams in the province were decreasing but others were floating just above 90%. For example, the Bon Accord dam has this week recorded 93.5%. This shows a slight decreased compared with last week when it was at 94.9%.

Bronkhorstspruit dam had shown a slight drop from last week’s levels, moving from 79.9% last week to 78.5% this week. The dam was at 95.9% in the same week last year.

The Rietvlei dam level declined to 83.7% this week, while the Roodeplaat dam, at 91.5%, was slightly lower than last week’s level of 92.5%. The dam ranks among those that have remained stable up until now.

Meanwhile, government has called on citizens across the country to continually conserve water, given that the country is water-scarce.

“As we approach the summer months, Cabinet calls on people in South Africa to use water wisely and sparingly,” it noted in a post-Cabinet statement on Thursday.

It also pointed out that urgent interventions had been implemented to help mitigate the impact of the ongoing drought in the Northern Cape.

“About R30 million has been reprioritised for immediate intervention in the procurement and distribution of fodder for the farming community as a short-term measure.

Government will also increase the capacity of water provision by drilling more boreholes in the affected areas of the province,” it said.