In certain parts of the Cape Peninsula, residents have noticed a helicopter flying overhead.

Although that’s nothing too unusual, it’s what’s attached to the ‘copter that has piqued people’s interest.

As part of the City’s desperate efforts to find additional water, as our dam levels decrease on the daily, they have contracted Umvoto Africa for some aerial surveying.

The goal? To locate and confirm prime locations which hold the highest volumes of water to be extracted from aquifers, reports IOL:

The aerial survey, which will take place over a four-week period in Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha and Philippi, is expected to help bring 25 million litres of water a day to the city’s supply from June next year.

According to managing director John Holmes, “the survey would help determine the subterranean geology, which will in turn reveal where they could expect to find water”:

“More importantly, it gives us a total overview of the resource so that we can manage it as one and not one borehole at a time,” he said.

Of course, Mayor Patricia de Lille had something to say, but we got wind of it through her spokesperson, Zara Nicholson:

“The City has taken a cautious approach to the abstraction of underground water from aquifers in order to ensure the process is both environmentally and ecologically sensitive.”

She said that even though the survey would be of great help in securing additional water, it shouldn’t be a reason for people to step back from saving water. “You can only save water while you have water. This is an opportunity for us to rethink our water mix, our relationship with water, and to ensure that we all thrive going forward as Team Cape Town,” she said.

Other additional water will come from tapping into the Atlantis-Silwerstroom Aquifer and Table Mountain Group Aquifer (TMGA), the first phase of the latter anticipated to yield be approximately 10 million litres a day.

Then, yield from the other areas of the TMG aquifers such as the Helderberg, South Peninsula and Wemmershoek will be approximately 50 to 60 million litres a day.

And what happens when those run out? I think it’s best that we just keep being as frugal as ever.

[source:iol]