Intermittent water supply‚ followed by having to collect water in buckets under the supervision of soldiers: this is Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille’s vision of the near future if the city’s dams run dry.
After meeting Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane‚ De Lille outlined the city council’s disaster plan at a briefing on Wednesday.
Cape Town’s taps could run dry within five months if consumption is not reduced to required levels, she warned.
The drought-stricken city was banking on late winter rains to refill its dams and stave off water cuts, but rainfall has been disappointingly erratic.
With the winter rainy season effectively over, dam levels are still falling fast and water use remains high.
De Lille begged Capetonians to stave off a disaster by saving more water‚ warning that otherwise Day Zero — when dams are no longer usable — would arrive in March.
“As things stand now, if we all use the water left in our dams more sparingly — which as of Monday stands at 27.6% useable water — combined with other demand management measures which are under way, we can stretch out the number of days of water we have left in our dams to beyond March 2018,” De Lille said.
“Winter is over and we are in for a long, hot, dry summer period where we will see a rapid decline of our dam levels.
“If consumption is not reduced to the required levels of 500-million litres of collective usage per day [currently collective water use remains at 618-million litres per day], we are looking at about March 2018 when supply of municipal water would not be available. The day or month of this happening is, however, not as important as what we do now to avoid such a time,” she said.
Officials were working to avoid a disaster but it was vital to plan for the worst-case scenario‚ she said‚ revealing that the city council had activated the first of three disaster-management phases.
This would involve extreme reductions in water pressure to force down consumption.
"As water rationing is intensified‚ some areas will be affected for short periods of time. This will lead to intermittent‚ localised‚ temporary water supply disruptions‚" she said.
"The city cannot provide definitive timetables of the disruptions as the water systems must be managed flexibly to avoid damage to critical infrastructure‚" said De Lille‚ advising residents to store five litres of water as an emergency supply.
"Any zoned outages will likely occur during peak water usage times in the mornings and evenings. We are asking people to prepare for water supply to be disrupted for a short period of time.
"Critical services such as clinics and hospitals will be largely unaffected, and mitigation measures will be put in place if they experience intermittent water supply."
Residents will be able to collect a predefined quantity of drinking water per person per day from these collection sites
In phase two of the disaster‚ water collection points would be introduced.
"Residents will be able to collect a predefined quantity of drinking water per person per day from these collection sites.
"Strategic commercial areas‚ high-density areas with significant risk of increased burden of disease and fires [such as the majority of informal settlements]‚ and critical services [such as hospitals]‚ where possible‚ would continue to receive drinking water through normal channels."
De Lille said council law enforcement officers‚ the police and soldiers would be deployed "to ensure that general safety is maintained throughout the city in this phase".
In the third phase, dubbed the extreme disaster phase, the city would be incapable of drawing water from its surface dams in the Western Cape Water Supply System.
There would be a limited period in which the city can continue to supply water before complete water system failure. Non-surface drinking water supplies, sourced from groundwater abstraction from various aquifers and spring water, will be available for drinking purposes only.
The city would distribute this drinking water to residents through water distribution points, De Lille said.
The mayor said the city’s temporary desalination plants‚ for which tenders have been sought‚ would start to produce fresh water from December or January.
Other new sources will come online at various stages and the yield of each source will rise incrementally, De Lille said.
Additional water from the Atlantis and Silverstroom aquifers‚ and recycled water from the Zandvliet treatment plant‚ would be available from January or February.
In the meantime‚ a mass roll-out of water management devices was taking place‚ targeting about 55‚000 excessive users. The commercial sector was also being monitored, and had to reduce water use by 20% from a year ago.
“I must emphasise that the disaster and extreme disaster phases (2 and 3) can be avoided with progressive savings and rationing in phase 1,” she said.
“This extreme can only be avoided if we all do what we need to do now to save water…. The severity and duration of this drought could not have been predicted. As a city, we are managing the situation with absolutely every drought intervention that we have at our disposal.”
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