The Mother City, as Cape Town is fondly known, has seen some drastic weather over the past year, and it does not seem to be getting better; earlier this month the world’s longest timed cycle race was cancelled amidst dry hot weather, blustering gale-force winds and uncontrollable wild fires.
There also seems to be no let-up in the drought; even though there was a slight amount of rain twice in the past fortnight, neither elicited more than a few millimetres of rain. The Western Cape is suffering its worst drought in decades and on the 13th of March the City of Cape Town warned that dam levels have dropped to 30% and with 10% of that unusable, with current consumption levels that means that there is now, at the time of this writing, less than 100 days of water left.
Even though most residents are doing their best to save, reuse and recycle water, usage is still approximately 51 million litres above the collective usage target of 700 million litres per day.
“The City of Cape Town thanks those consumers who have stepped up their efforts to reduce water consumption dramatically. However, it remains crunch time and further reductions are vital as the draw-down rate of the dams continues to stay pronounced due to the climatic conditions,” read a statement by City authorities.
It also falls to the City to do its part though, as many citizens have complained that they do not know their water usage as estimates are done in many cases instead of actual readings, and others have stated that they have constantly complained about leaks and it took too long to attend to them if at all.
The City is keeping its contingency and emergency measures in place conjunction with the National Department of Water and Sanitation, but unless there is some rain, by some miracle, the residents of the Western Cape are in for an even drier time in the months to come.
Rent water coolers or buy water coolers from Living-Water.
