Vaal Dam - underlying Gauteng's wealth

Abstract

Water History The outbreak of two World Wars saw massive bursts of secondary industrialisation taking place on the Witwatersrand, and with it an exponential growth in population. This resulted in an insatiable demand for water. Between 1915-16 and 1921-22 the number of industrial establishments in and around Johannes burg more than doubled from 862 to 1760. With Johannesburg being one of the few large cities in the world not built on a large river, the Rand Water Board looked to the nearby Vaal River to meet the growing demand, constructing the Vaal Barrage in the early 1920s. Soon, however, this proved not to be enough to meet the users’ growing water needs. The Rand Water Board reached the limits of its abstraction rights in the early 1930s around the same time as the government was planning to build a dam at Christiana to provide water for the Vaalhartz Irrigation Scheme. After much debate, it was decided instead to build a dam at the confluence of the Wilge and Vaal rivers about 56 km south of Johannesburg, near Vereeniging.

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