“We can say that residents and visitors to the city of Johannesburg needn’t fear about the quality of water supply to city,” the utility’s laboratory support manager Russel Rimmer said.

Speaking at a briefing on the R3.1-billion program of improvements and replacements within the city’s 10,000 kilometer water mains network, he said they conduct more than the legally required number of sample tests on supplies they receive from Rand Water, and were confident that the city’s supplies were safe.

“We do over 40 tests on the samples to be 100 percent sure of the water quality,” he said.

“Sometimes we are even scared to brush our teeth and we go out [in Europe] and buy a bottle of water. So, our water is safe.”

They had recently won the “Blue Drop” award from the department of water affairs which said the city had the cleanest water nationally and ranked among the world’s best.

Releasing the 2010 Host Cities Drinking Water Quality Management Audit Report on Wednesday, Sonjica said the world can rest assured that tap water in all host cities is safe to drink.

The audit used the Blue Drop Certification System, an incentive-based regulation system which the department introduced in September 2008 to rate municipalities across the country.

All of the host cities scored 95 percent under the certification system and were awarded Blue Drop Status.

Johannesburg (98.39 percent) and Cape Town (98.18 percent) got the highest scores, while Rustenburg (95.1 percent), Port Elizabeth (95.08 percent) and Bloemfontein (95.05 percent) ranked the lowest.

Over the last six months the country’s overall South African drinking water quality was measured as 96 percent, an improvement over the 2009 Blue Drop Report when the country’s towns and municipalities scored on average 93.3 percent.

Relative to other countries South Africa have safe tape water.
“You go to other countries and at the hotels there’s a tag there – don’t drink from the taps. We’ve never had that,” said Sonjica