[1]: 210  The rivers in the Witwatersrand tended to dry out in the winter and were therefore a poor source of water and semiarid with grasslands and soil more suitable for cattle and sheep farming prior to the discovery of gold.

[1]: 210 Gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand during March 1886 and several communities would rapidly develop from tents, to villages, towns and eventually into a city called Johannesburg.

[1]: 217 [2] The Board would be made up of eleven members recommended by the Governor of the Transvaal Colony, the Johannesburg Town Council, the Chamber of Mines and other municipalities at the time and would amalgamate all other companies currently supply water to that point.

[4]: 56 Initial water sources for the growing town of Johannesburg were obtained from three spruits or streams, one at a spruit in Fordsburg which still runs at the western end of Commissioner Street, a stream called Natalspruit at the eastern end of Commissioner Street near Jeppestown and a spring on Parktown ridge where Johannesburg General Hospital stands.

[4]: 52 The company then built a dam at a site in present-day Doornfontein where the Ellis Park Stadium is now positioned and then pumped the water to a reservoir on the ridge above Saratoga Avenue on the corner of Harrow Road and this gravity fed supply was said to have provided 3,409,569L during the rainy season.

[4]: 53  The population of the town, run at that time by a Sanitary Board, was petitioned in 1892 concerning the lack of adequate water supply and its cost, 15s per gallon and 5s per month for metering.

[4]: 54  In 1898, the Johannesburg Waterworks Company sunk boreholes on the farm Zuurbekom (on the outskirts of Lenasia; 26°18′04″S 27°48′49″E / 26.30104°S 27.81350°E / -26.30104; 27.81350), under which was a natural aquifer of 466 km2 that would eventually produce 34 095 000 litres a day.