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The Mother City has already come far too close to running out of water, with the worst drought on record in 2018 really doing a number on us.

Knowing intimately how water doesn’t last forever, Cape Town is planning to build new desalination plants and treat wastewater to diversify its future supply and reduce reliance on dams.

This is great news, even as our dams overflow in abundance with all this Winter rain we’ve been having.

According to the city’s latest water outlook, the authorities are taking steps to meet a growing population’s needs, News24 reports. The outlook also anticipates that the region will need a fair share of stored water to fight those wildfires that are bound to rage as climate change intensifies and rainfall potentially declines.

“Cape Town has learnt that we cannot solely rely on dams for water security, so the city is busy investing in its new water program,” said Zahid Badroodien, the mayoral committee member for water and sanitation.

“The strategy aims to build resilience to the effects of climate change and future droughts that are expected to be more frequent and severe.”

The city currently uses about 862 million litres of water a day, and that is expected to rise by 300 million litres by 2030. Almost half of that will come from new projects including a desalination plant to be installed in the main harbour. Another plant, the Faure New Water Scheme, will process wastewater to make it suitable for drinking.

Feasibility studies underway “will consider suitable external mechanisms for the most effective options for financing, construction, operation and maintenance of the proposed plants,” Badroodien said, declining to estimate a cost for either facility.

Drilling new boreholes, tapping springs and clearing invasive plants are other possible interventions that the city can adopt to save water and increase supply.

We’re tipping our hat at this forethought. We all know we can’t go back to being limited to 50 litres a day for all our water needs, like bathing, cleaning and cooking.

[source:news24]