Individual meters might clear up new complex water tariffs

Level 2 water restrictions, implemented since November last year, will now enable Johannesburg Water (JW) to slap households that use more than 20 kilolitres (20 000 litres) a month with a tariff increase of 10 per cent and upwards.

Many of the City’s residents live in a complex or estate and own sectional title properties where a lack of individual water meters could mean paying a possible tariff increase ‘difficult’.

The entity’s spokesperson, Eleanor Mavimbela said in complexes it could happen that “… everyone [will] share the penalty for the few who are not water-wise”.

“In complexes where the bill is shared it is usually shared equally between home-owners, thus if they use more than the 20 kilolitres per homeowner after the total consumption is divided by the number of units, they will be charged the water restriction tariff,” she said.

According to Mike Muller, commissioner of South Africa’s first National Planning Commission, the approach taken by Johannesburg Water appears fair but the problem arises where a body corporate has a single meter for the whole complex. “They will have to work out their average consumption. If it is above or close to 20 kilolitres, they will have to work out with their members how to share responsibility,” he said.

Tertius Maree, a specialist in legal aspects related to the management and administration of sectional title schemes at Tertius Maree Associates, believes it to be incorrect when the body corporate of a complex divides water consumption equally among all owners. “Unless separate meters are installed, the split must be done according to the participation quotas of the sections,” he said in reference to the number of people living in a unit and how the bill is split.

Darlington Mushongera, an expert in the challenges associated with service delivery and researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand, believes that if body corporates are able to bill households individually for electricity, they can extend it to water through an infrastructure upgrade. “Then they can detect who is consuming how much and allocate the bill accordingly,” he said.

The water restriction tariff is a bid to decrease water use in the City by 15 per cent, as required by the Department of Water and Sanitation. The MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services, Anthony Still, said if these measures are not effective in reducing demand by 15 per cent, then the JW system will face the risk of outages.

Ultimately it is up to residents who live in a complex without individual water meters, to encourage each other to use water carefully, Muller added.