I live in Cape Town, and this article is missing some points about whats been going on:<p>1. "Day 0" has been moved forward - we're now expected to run out of water 21 April.<p>2. The daily limit of water per person is 87l but only ~50% of consumers meet this target<p>3. This is considered a 1/1000 year event (in contrast to 1/100 experienced elsewhere in the country recently). However due to increased population this is being called "the new normal".<p>4. Water allocation between residential/agriculture was done at some national level, meaning the province wasn't able to manage the supplies correctly.<p>5. 6/7 water relief projects are behind schedule - these include desalination plants and aquifer pumps.<p>6. We lose 15% of our water through leaks - much lower than the world average but not as good as the best (around 10% in Australia and New Zealand)<p>Some other personal notes:
1. There has been talk of tapping the aquifers for decades - the studies haven't been prioritised and we still don't know how much we can safely take. The outlying areas of Cape Town are essentially marshes and during normal rainfall seasons are prone to flooding, so there is definitely some space but noone knows how much.<p>2. The city has lost R1.6b ($130m) in water fees due to reduced usage, so now we're facing a "drought tax". To me this is bullshit but thats a whole other post.<p>3. The restrictions should not be eased once the dams are full - with climate change and increasing population its only a matter of time until we run out of water and no amount of rainfall is going to help<p>4. When we run out of water there will be water trucks and collections points, but there has been no talk of sanitation - I suspect a lot of people are going to get really sick.
A few points from a Capetonian observing a potential disaster in slow motion:<p>(a) I don't know how claims about the % of users who are toeing the water restriction line can possibly be accurate. what is the population of Cape Town - last major census in 2011. What if there are actually 50 000 more people in CT than we think?<p>(b) water production is at just about half of what it was at peak in Jan 2015 despite population growth. This is surely a remarkable achievement, presumably a result of considerable collective action. Source (production graph here: <a href="http://resource.capetown.gov.za/documentcentre/Documents/City%20research%20reports%20and%20review/damlevels.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://resource.capetown.gov.za/documentcentre/Documents/Cit...</a>)<p>(c) the most egregious users have had water restriction devices installed - maybe the bar is too high and city should be stricter about when this measure is taken.<p>(d) the daily production of water has been more or less constant since July. This tells me that there is not that much more give. The only serious reduction I could see is through very difficult to enforce measures e.g. buckets only instead of showers. However I would prefer to do this now instead of having dry taps in April.<p>On a personal note: many home owners have boreholes and full rainwater tanks (it is difficult to store more than a few rainy days' worth of water). My parents' tank is +- 20 days of water at 87l pp per day, although they do not currently have a way to purify the water. My block has a plan to put borehole water into the flats. I don't think anyone knows how long borehole water will last though as there has been a massive spike in drilling.
We are a couple living in Cape Town. For the past 6 months we've been averaging 60 litres per person per day, with a downward trend. We don't have a swimming pool. We don't water the garden or lawn. It looks hideous, but those steps were easy gains.<p>It's our water closet habits that had to change drastically. If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, let it drown. We shower, very quickly, with 2 buckets and try to catch as much water as possible. We turn off the shower while lathering up with soap and would dip our sponges in the buckets if we need to add water to the mix. It's basically taking a bucket bath in a shower and a quick rinse afterwards.<p>We use the gathered water to drown the brown. Sometimes a quick flush with water from the cistern is necessary, but we can limit the flush by lifting the lever (unlike older cisterns).<p>Other people have installed tanks in their backyards to collect rainwater from the roof, but we don't have the space.<p>It's an inconvenience, but so far it hasn't been too difficult to get under the 87 litre target. It just required some attention, and very importantly, frequent monitoring. Frankly, I'm disgusted that more than half of my fellow citizens couldn't reach the target.
For anyone wanting to read more about this, here are some articles and data from the Climate System Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town.<p>This article explains the severity of the drought, and calculates that the return interval for a two-year drought of this severity is 1150 years (!), which mostly absolves the City of blame for not anticipating it: <a href="http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/2017/08/28/how-severe-is-this-drought-really/" rel="nofollow">http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/2017/08/28/how-severe-is-this-drou...</a><p>Here, you can see an interactive plot of rainfall in Cape Town. Highlight 2017, 2016 and 2015 to see the reason for the current crisis: <a href="http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/current-seasons-rainfall-in-cape-town/" rel="nofollow">http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/current-seasons-rainfall-in-cape-t...</a><p>Addressing the scaremongering by the City around "the new normal": <a href="http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/2017/11/01/is-cape-towns-drought-the-new-normal-piotr-wolskis-article-for-groundup/" rel="nofollow">http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/2017/11/01/is-cape-towns-drought-t...</a><p>Describing the difficulty of forecasting this drought: <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cape-towns-drought-was-so-hard-to-forecast-84735" rel="nofollow">https://theconversation.com/why-cape-towns-drought-was-so-ha...</a>
We've been looking at reducing water use this spring; someone else might find these products useful:<p>OAS(1) showers cap water at 5-10L per use, no matter how long you shower. Getting this installed also means we can swap our water heater to run on the solar array entirely, since you're not flushing all that energy down the drain while you shower.<p>Waterless urinals(2) use no water at all. They work by keeping a layer of oil in the trap instead. Pee sinks under the oil layer and out of the trap, oil stays in the trap since it floats on top. So, stays just as clean as a regular toilet, with no water hookup.<p>Disclosure: None, I've got nothing to do with these companies, other than buying their products for my cabin.<p>(1) <a href="https://orbital-systems.com/" rel="nofollow">https://orbital-systems.com/</a><p>(2) <a href="https://www.waterless.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.waterless.com/</a>
I'm currently in Brisbane, and arrived here while the big drought was still in progress (around 2008). Numerous restrictions, legislation for water saving measures, desal plants, etc were being implemented at the time, with pretty astounding results in terms of average water consumption.<p>The drought broke in January 2011, and it's a little sad to see how much that was learnt, has been forgotten in the last 7 years. Desal plants all but mothballed, average consumption gone up (almost double the drought levels again), etc. I really hope the drought in Cape Town breaks soon (I have many friends there), but I hope they don't unlearn the lessons, and kill infrastructure when it does.<p>Interestingly, late last year, it was pointed out by the authorities that the dams are at warning (pre restriction) levels again here, so I dare say we will see it all again.
even though the dams are almost depleted the city's lack of water is more due to political issues than water management. the government is insisting that the local desalination plant manufacturer (which supplies australia and other countries) operate through a "Black Economic Empowerment" partner which heavily inflates the cost, and most likely will be tied to "the worlds most corrupt presidents" partners in crime, the Gupta family.
This has also led to an interesting social experiment based on a theory developed by the University of California (<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494414001066" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494414...</a>) where household water consumption has been made public (<a href="https://citymaps.capetown.gov.za/waterviewer/" rel="nofollow">https://citymaps.capetown.gov.za/waterviewer/</a>) in order to apply social pressure on high users.
It's definitely a big problem, yet I see a lot of creative solutions which gives us a bit of hope for the future. People are also working together to keep water consumption at its lowest.<p>A lot of people are gathering rain water with big water tanks next to their houses. I've personally built a setup connected to the gutters of my roof, and it's amazing how much water you can gather like this.<p>It's also quite easy to keep your swimming pool topped up by simply getting a cover for it so that water does not evaporate.<p>However the occasional light rains won't do much to affect the big dams that supply drinking water to the wider population of Cape Town. There simply has been too little rain these past winters to fill the dams up to an adequate level.<p>I think the long term solutions for Cape Town will be increasing and improving the water catchment areas so the dams can cope with the population increase, possibly combined with desalination plants if it gets really bad.
Watch out for Waterseer. Not sure I trust that company after their ludicrous misjudgement in their first invention:<p>[Thunderfoot Video](<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVsqIjAeeXw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVsqIjAeeXw</a>)<p>[Lindybeige Video](<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zfYAXWODUs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zfYAXWODUs</a>)<p>Side-note: I live in the Cape Town area. We got on international news! Yay us...?<p>Honestly, I'm pretty worried.
For visitors to CPT, it may not seem like a city that is undergoing a drought. Indeed, CPT still gets a fair bit of rain, if lower than previous years. The problem is we do not get rain in areas where our dams that provide drinking water are situated.
Here’s the link to the official “Day 0” page:<p><a href="http://coct.co/water-dashboard/" rel="nofollow">http://coct.co/water-dashboard/</a>
The irony I've found is that when you cut water usage, the water company will INCREASE your fees because they're not making enough money. They tell us to save water, and then turn around and charge us more for using less, it's very angering.
Governments should be aware that to produce 1 pound of beef you need 50000 liters of fresh water, and if they are aware, stop lying to the population. But yes, I guess you could try to save 40 liters per day with your oil urinal.
That last paragraph, literally following the statement before it just makes me mad :<p>"But there is a sense that much of this technology is merely tinkering at the edges. The overarching issue is the potentially devastating effect of global warming on water availability and how we, collectively, endeavour to tackle it."<p>Unfortunately this statement is absurd. The real cause:<p>"Most recent projections suggest that its water could run out as early as March. The crisis has been caused by three years of very low rainfall, coupled with increasing consumption by a growing population."<p>So an extremely rare event is causing a water shortage. How has climate change affected this ? Well, it has moved the average of the distribution of rainfall by a few percent (at most).<p>How far are we from the average ? Close to 3 sigma away from it, and increasing every day. If the city actually runs out of water we'll be closer to 4 sigma before it happens.<p>So how much influence does climate change have on it. Opening my python client I feel like it can be distributed as such:<p>1) 99.99999% is a coincidence (a series of unrelated events spanning 4+ years causing a lack of rainfall in the area)<p>2) 0.00001% is climate change<p>In other words, if you solved climate change today, nothing at all would change for this city. And yet that claim from the BBC gets inserted there.
Cape Town has had some record high temperatures in recent years (1) along with the multi-year drought.<p>To what extent is this likely to be due to climate change?<p>1)<p><a href="http://www.traveller24.com/News/Alerts/sa-summer-heat-breaks-records-whats-going-on-with-the-weather-20160113" rel="nofollow">http://www.traveller24.com/News/Alerts/sa-summer-heat-breaks...</a><p><a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/12/07/heatwave-brings-record-setting-temperatures-across-wc" rel="nofollow">http://ewn.co.za/2017/12/07/heatwave-brings-record-setting-t...</a>
It's a scary situation. Cape Town is a very popular tourist destination and one wonders if that industry as a whole is managing to comply with the restrictions (thus adversely affecting business)
Devices like WaterSeer have been debunked a while ago by guys like Dave from EEVBlog. Basically the math behind them do not check out at all.<p>Does anyone got alternative views?
I always wondered why you can buy a lot of H2O filled fruits like grapes from South Africa in Europa. They must have some enourmous amounts of water if they can export it. Maybe the price of water isn’t high enough yet or can’t be paid?
Just finished reading Affluence Without Abundance <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Affluence-Without-Abundance-Disappearing-Bushmen/dp/1632865726" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Affluence-Without-Abundance-Disappear...</a> about bushmen who live in southern Africa.<p>It turns out people have lived in southern Africa for <i>200,000 years</i>, hunting and gathering.<p>Westerners show up, run out of water in a couple hundred years, and call them "developing."<p>The book is an eye-opener.
Sanaa, the capital city of Yemen, has already run out of water. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-blockade-redcross/2-5-million-yemenis-now-lack-access-to-clean-water-red-cross-idUSKBN1DK1ZP" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-blockade-r...</a><p>There were serious problems before the war, but now it's just a disaster area. The US supports this.
The largest of the dams supplying Cape Town (Theewaterskloof) has a massive surface area (around 5000 ha). Given that the area also tends to be very windy due to its altitude and the prevailing South Easter that blows right throughout summer, evaporation must be really high. Also desalination is energy intensive.<p>For political reasons I'm pretty sure this would be impossible, but I wonder how practical it would be to cover it with solar panels and use the energy for desalination.