Treasury norm: 15% to 30%
Share of water bought or purified that is lost before it is sold.
Source: Nelson Mandela Bay’s audited annual financial statements.
Water · Eastern Cape
Nelson Mandela Bay
Is my water reliable? How much is lost? Is it safe?
52.7%
of the water bought or purified was lost before it was sold in 2024-25. Treasury’s norm is 15% to 30%.
Official: Audited annual financial statements · Data as of 2024-25 financial year (audited statements) · Next update expected Jan 2027 (2025-26 annual reports) · Last updated
Compare all eight metros: Water. An asterisk marks a figure our automated checks found inconsistent with another official figure; it is shown as reported, explained in a footnote and left out of rankings.
Water cut for two days or more
Official: Stats SA, General Household Survey 2025 · Data as of General Household Survey 2025
106 000
households in Nelson Mandela Bay told Stats SA their water had been cut for 48 hours or more at a time in the past year, out of about 396 000 households.
Stats SA: “a smaller percentage of households in metropolitan areas reported water interruptions (30,0% compared with 37,6%). Water interruptions were most common in eThekwini (43,9%), which is almost six time more common than in the City of Cape Town (7,8%).”
Cut 2+ days: households that answered yes to a water cut of 48 hours or more at a time, in thousands as Stats SA prints them (Table 2.8: Water and sanitation variables by metro); all households from Table 3.7. A sample survey. Sources: GHS 2025: selected development indicators, metros (P0318.3); the quotation is from the main GHS 2025 release (P0318), section 9.3. For cuts happening now, see the city’s notices and community reports.
Water lost before it reaches a meter
Official: audited annual financial statements · Data as of 2024-25 financial year (audited statements) · Next update expected Jan 2027 (2025-26 annual reports) · Last updated
Water a metro buys or purifies but never bills: leaks, burst pipes, illegal connections and faulty meters. Treasury’s norm is 15% to 30%.
What these words mean
- Distribution losses
- Water or electricity a metro buys or produces but never bills: leaks, theft, illegal connections and faulty meters.
- Non-revenue water
- All water that earns no money, including water given free to poor households. Close to, but not the same as, water lost.
- Treasury norm
- A target National Treasury sets for every municipality in MFMA Circular 71, so metros can be compared on the same scale.
Nelson Mandela Bay’s dams
Official: Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality · 8 Oct 2026 · Data as of see each reading’s date · Updates: daily or weekly, depending on the publisher · Last updated
101.2%
full across the Algoa system’s dams on 8 Oct 2026. Usable water, above the dead storage at the bottom of each dam: 91.9%.
Kromrivier Dam is not listed by the city. The city also gets Orange River water through the Nooitgedagt treatment works, which no dam figure covers. The city does not publish last week’s or last year’s levels; we keep each update. Our record starts with this one. Source: Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, dam levels.
National reference: DWS weekly summary
Official: DWS weekly State of Reservoirs, copied 10 Oct 2026 · Data as of see the copy date · Updates: DWS publishes weekly; we copy by hand
101%
full: the Algoa, Nelson Mandela Bay’s main water supply system. Last week 101%; a year ago 62%.
Nelson Mandela Bay also gets water from the Orange River through the Nooitgedagt treatment works, which the Algoa dams do not include; in the 2021 drought it supplied close to two-thirds of the city’s water (municipal water guide, Dec 2021). Source
DWS: these summaries cover only the dams in its State of Reservoirs report. Several metros share a system: Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni all draw mainly on the Integrated Vaal River System. Each metro’s main system is confirmed from its own documents (source). The DWS site refuses automated requests, so these figures are copied by hand from its summary pages each week (copied 10 Oct 2026; the report’s own date was not copied). Source: DWS, weekly summary by water supply system.
Water outage notices
Official: Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, alerts · Data as of see each notice’s date · Updates: checked daily · Last updated
39 water interruption notices from Nelson Mandela Bay since 1 Jan 2025; 31 named places we could match to wards.
Latest notices
- 3 Sep 2026 WATER UPDATE · wards 48, 49, 50
- 18 Jun 2026 Water trucks are roaming in the following areas: · wards 3, 7, 11
- 12 Jun 2026 WATER SUPPLY RECOVERY UPDATE – KARIEGA · wards 48, 49, 50, 51
- 29 May 2026 WATER DISRUPTION UPDATE
- 28 May 2026 WATER DISRUPTION - KARIEGA · wards 49, 50, 51
- 28 May 2026 UPDATE WATER DISRUPTION
- 15 May 2026 WATER TRUCK LOCATIONS · wards 13, 14, 25, 32
- 4 May 2026 ORANGE LEVEL 6 WARNING: DISRUPTIVE RAIN IN NELSON MANDELA BAY
- 18 Feb 2026 WATER SUPPLY DISRUPTION - NOOITGEDAGT · wards 41, 45, 51
- 6 Feb 2026 Water trucks are roaming in the following areas: · wards 23, 30, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 53, 54, 55…
- 5 Feb 2026 Water trucks are roaming in the following areas:
- 3 Feb 2026 Water trucks are roaming in the following areas: · wards 23, 30, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 53, 54, 55…
- 30 Jan 2026 WATER TRUCK LOCATIONS · wards 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 52
- 23 Jan 2026 Water trucks are roaming in the following areas: · wards 8, 10, 23, 30, 34, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59
- 21 Jan 2026 WATER SUPPLY DISRUPTION – MULTIPLE SUPPLY ZONES · wards 41, 49, 50
Places are matched by their Stats SA Census 2011 names, longest name first, with no guessing; a name we cannot match is listed for checking and not linked to a ward. Notices before 1 Jan 2025 are not included. Where a metro publishes no notices, residents can report an outage (community reports, unverified).
Still to come on this page
- Drinking-water and wastewater ratings. Department of Water and Sanitation, Blue Drop and Green Drop reports · ws.dws.gov.za and www.dws.gov.za refuse automated requests, including from GitHub’s servers