Cape now runs dry earlier

Day Zero for taps to run dry in the City of Cape Town has again been revised.

Mayor Patricia de Lille told the media yesterday that dam levels had dipped below 30% since the start of this year.

This meant instead of an imminent cut-off of April 29 it is now April 22. Total storage in the dams has fallen by 1.3% and dam levels currently stood at 29.7%.

And while usage has dropped from more than 600 million litres a day, the situation was still dire.

The target to avoid day zero is 500 million. In the past week the city’s overall water usage was 578 million litres per day.

Only approximately 18% is usable, as the remaining essential resource had proven too difficult to extract. But the city was forging ahead with plans to drill for water in three aquifers.

The aquifers in Cape Flats were set to deliver 80 million litres per day, Table Mountain 40 million, and Atlantis 30 million. Drilling will start next week.

To drill and purify the water would cost about R80 million, De Lille said.

The projects formed part of the city’s programme to supply additional water through desalination plants, water recycling and boreholes.

“It has been an intense effort to find ways to revise our plans to make bigger volumes of water available at a lower cost,” she said.

The city has to try and keep financially afloat as it loses water revenue to the tune of R1.6 billion due to a decrease in the sale of water. Millions of rands have so far been spent on the various water supply projects.

The city has proposed a “drought charge”, previously called a water tax levy, which is still to be approved by the minister of finance. De Lille said 464 000 households out of a total of 707 814 would be affected by the charge.

Of these, 52 510 would pay more than R150 per month, with the majority having to pay out less than R47 per month.

Peter Flower, the director of water and sanitation, said the city had bolstered its team of inspectors.

About 50 inspectors, including law enforcement, were on the ground throughout the week.

Their duties also entailed the installation of water management devices and fines to curb the supply to abusers of water.

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