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I live in Cape Town, and this article is missing some points about whats been going on: 1. "Day 0" has been moved forward - we're now expected to run out of wa

I live in Cape Town, and this article is missing some points about whats been going on: 1. "Day 0" has been moved forward - we're now expected to run out of water 21 April. 2. The daily limit of water per person is 87l but only ~50% of consumers meet this target 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". 4. Water allocation between residential/agriculture was done at some national level, meaning the province wasn't able to manage the supplies correctly. 5. 6/7 water relief projects are behind schedule - these include desalination plants and aquifer pumps. 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) 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. 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. 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 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.

snowwolf 9y ago
Its just been announced that from Feb 1st the daily limit is going to be 50l and the drought tax is off the table. https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-01-18-de-lille-pushes-the-drought-panic-button/ https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-01-18-de-...
nukeop 9y ago
I thought climate change was supposed to provide easier access to water?
- pjc50 9y ago
  Why did you think that?
  - yoz-y 9y ago
    I would guess rising seas. Water gets closer to you, literally.
    - SolarNet 9y ago
      Have you ever tried drinking sea water? It tastes salty. The short of it being: It makes you thirstier; drinking it is worse than drinking nothing. Desalination is expensive in many ways. If it was a viable way of acquiring water (which it is in some places, like literal deserts) then these places would have already done it. Hence rising sea levels provide no additional access drinkable water.
      - 20after4 9y ago
        But it has what plants crave.
        croon 9y ago
        Not sure if you're being facetious, but saltwater kills most plants, with a few exceptions.
        chowells 9y ago
        And just yesterday, I was thinking no one here would need to explain who Mike Judge is to the general audience. "It's got what plants crave" is a line from his movie Idiocracy. It is directly relevant the discussion at hand, but it's also a zero-effort joke that contributes nothing new.
        phaemon 9y ago
pure-awesome 9y ago
Capetonian here as well. I'm honestly more than a little bit worried about the situation.
charlesdm 9y ago
Well, that's interesting. Are there companies that own water capacity in countries? Might be a good long term investment.
- badosu 9y ago
  Not sure how to interpret this statement.. One part of me is disgusted at someone profiting from bad planning and misery of others, the other thinks that this is something that really needs investing.
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    I meant this in a positive, not negative way. A for-profit company, if done properly, will be able to introduce the required infrastructure where necessary. It should (theoretically at least) also be run in a better way -- if the infrastructure isn't functioning properly, no profits are being made.
    - locopati 9y ago
      that is so often not the way for-profit works in any public system (ex: prisons, electricity, garbage hauling, education)
    - pjc50 9y ago
      "if done properly", state infrastructure can do this just as well. I'd have a look at the Carillion bankruptcy before claiming that the private sector is a solution.
      - pathseeker 9y ago
        The problem is that state's aren't really motivated to get things done in a cost efficient manner. If the government in SA is like the US, employees are not rewarded for doing anything beyond the bare minimum to prove that they are still alive. In a private business, the employees have to help the business towards its goal of making money, so all of the incentives are aligned to be successful (employees want promotions and not to get fired, the investors don't want to lose money).
chesimov 9y ago
On point 4 - my understanding is that the poorest areas (which are at most risk of disease outbreaks) will not have their water cut. Rather, everyone else will have their water cut first while some water still remains in the dams, which is specifically allocated for those areas and will last long enough until the mid-year rain. I last read this a while ago though, so things may have changed.
- nevi-me 9y ago
  Yes, this was mentioned today in the news on one of the radio stations. It went like "the poorer communities that rely on communal taps, will not have their water cut, because they already collect water at those taps". This is sadly a travesty coming.
ilitirit 9y ago
On the first point 4, it's something that many people don't realise. Water policy in this context is set on a National level. All these Youtubers and Facebook protestors don't understand that a Municipality can't simply shut off water to farms/mines. Various approaches were already discussed prior to the Water Act of 1998: http://www.dwa.gov.za/Documents/Policies/nwpwp.pdf http://www.dwa.gov.za/Documents/Policies/nwpwp.pdf But as it says in that document - it's National Policy. The government will need to make the call. There may well be provision for disaster areas, but the government doesn't think CPT qualifies. On the second point 4, there's a already a health concern with regards to our current water supply. Cracks in pipes in the existing infrastructure allow impurities to enter our water supply. When the pipes are at full pressure this doesn't happen. However, when the pressure is dropped (as what is currently happening in various suburbs), the pressure is not enough to keep these impurities out, and you end up with a contaminated supply in some areas.
wonderwonder 9y ago
Does government corruption / incompetence come into play in making this situation worse than it should be?
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago
  > Does government corruption / incompetence come into play Of course there is a political dimension. The SA national government (ANC) is from a different party to the Cape Town local government (Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party). So there is tension between local and national governments. They try to make each other look bad. Hard to prove, it it does look like the National government is either just neglecting Cape Town or deliberately encouraging it to fail. And they are corrupt, particularly the national government, yes. https://www.biznews.com/undictated/2017/12/15/cape-town-water-crisis-anc-da/ https://www.biznews.com/undictated/2017/12/15/cape-town-wate... https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2016/12/05/sa-water-state-capture/ https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2016/12/05/sa-water-...
  - igitur 9y ago
    I'm not entirely convinced that it is due to malice. Keep in mind that the Department of Water and Sanitation has been declared bankrupt, so I think it's mostly incompetence. http://ewn.co.za/2017/02/12/report-water-and-sanitation-department-bankrupt http://ewn.co.za/2017/02/12/report-water-and-sanitation-depa...
- SeoxyS 9y ago
  Government corruption and incompetence is 100% responsible for this, not climate change.
- johndevor 9y ago
  I think this is a decent summary: https://youtu.be/nOvmjs0J_QQ https://youtu.be/nOvmjs0J_QQ
logingone 9y ago
Regarding the policy being set at national level - I've seen mention of the Western Cape seceding - how realistic was that, and has this had any effect on that? I'm ex Durban/Johannesburg, abandoned the rainbow nation 20 or so years ago with zero confidence in its future, and I'm afraid it was the right call; part of me would love to return, and the WC (there's a pun there) seceding would interest me for a move there.
- chesimov 9y ago
  Well, there's an exodus from the rest of the country to the W. Cape. They call it 'semigration'. Property was up 12% a while ago when all other provinces saw a decline I think (except Gauteng; they were up 3%). As a young person of the wrong demographic here though, myself and most of my friends are preparing for possible departure for a few different reasons. If you are already established in a field with an overseas nest egg that can't be touched by SA inflation though, then Cape Town is probably one of the best cities to live in on the planet. If you know what you're doing, living here is fantastic.
  - avn2109 9y ago
    Can you elaborate on what makes CT so good? My South African friends always say this but I can't get a straight answer out of them why it's so great.
  - tonteldoos 9y ago
    The joke used to be that the WC is where you emmigrated to if you didn't want to emmigrate :)
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  What's the "wrong demographic"? Or..what is the right demographic?
- igitur 9y ago
  To answer your question, I haven't met anyone in Cape Town who takes a WC secession seriously. There is a very small political party that advocates for it, be its treated as one of the joke parties.
pixl97 9y ago
>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. Why? In already deployed networks, decreased usage means the cost per client, or the cost per unit used will go up. This is a problem with any network that charges for delivery based on usage and cannot easily cut off unused parts of the network.
- opportune 9y ago
  Because that shouldn't be charged after the fact, ideally it should be priced into the water prices as consumers purchase it.
  - patejam 9y ago
    That's assuming pricing scales linearly. More likely, it takes a flat-ish $x to maintain the infrastructure, and the reduced usage means they can't reach that minimum $x threshold.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    To not charge it after the fact, you’d have to recoup costs much faster in the earlier years of the system existence, causing crushing water bills to exist. It’s not a policy issue, it’s an education issue.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  It's also a problem with networks that bill by usage but spread both fixed and usage-variable costs across the expected usage, even if they don't have issues cutting off unused parts of the network; a sharp drop in usage underfunds the costs that aren't variable.
fossuser 9y ago
Are you looking to get out? It doesn't sound like things are trending in a good directly and water supply scarcity seems likely to cause instability and other issues. Why stay there?
- Ratelman 9y ago
  So my situation is I bought a house here, still paying off the bond, so selling is not really an option at the moment (haven't paid off that much and no one wants to buy a house in an area where there will be no water) Not really a situation where I can just cut my losses (buying a house is a lot of debt) and go
eisa01 9y ago
Have they rolled out smart water meters to monitor consumption and bill per liter? I would think that would be very effective and a fair way to ration the remaining water You could even have progressive rates That would also prompt people to install water saving devices
- nevi-me 9y ago
  The mayor has avoided answering that question on some radio shows. There's the cost of such meters, and the conspiracies that some of the water usage offenders are wealthy people who might be supporting the ruling party in the city or province. When flying into Cape Town, you still see a large number of pools that look well-maintained, which is scary. I'm convinced that some residents just quietly pay excessive water penalties, and are let off the hook. Given the Listeria breakout that's happening, and the "falling" or unprepared public health sector, it's a matter of weeks till we deal with a huge crisis. Disclaimer: I have been working in CT for a few months, fly in and out every week.
mnglkhn2 9y ago
It’s going to get worse before it gets better (if)! Your description point to infrastructure decay.
SolarNet 9y ago
On the point 3. Climate change is causing many 1/1000 and 1/100 type events to happen more often; especially as it relates to rainfall, like record droughts and monsoons. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the new normal because of that as well (which will make the population issue even worse).
czue 9y ago
Another Cape Town resident here. I've been trying to consolidate a lot of this information (and links to official sources) on http://www.capetowndrought.com http://www.capetowndrought.com. Just sharing in case helpful. :)

snowwolf 9y ago

Its just been announced that from Feb 1st the daily limit is going to be 50l and the drought tax is off the table. https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-01-18-de-lille-pushes-the-drought-panic-button/ https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-01-18-de-...

nukeop 9y ago

I thought climate change was supposed to provide easier access to water?

pjc50 9y ago
Why did you think that?
- yoz-y 9y ago
  I would guess rising seas. Water gets closer to you, literally.
  - SolarNet 9y ago
    Have you ever tried drinking sea water? It tastes salty. The short of it being: It makes you thirstier; drinking it is worse than drinking nothing. Desalination is expensive in many ways. If it was a viable way of acquiring water (which it is in some places, like literal deserts) then these places would have already done it. Hence rising sea levels provide no additional access drinkable water.
    - 20after4 9y ago
      But it has what plants crave.
      - croon 9y ago
        Not sure if you're being facetious, but saltwater kills most plants, with a few exceptions.
        chowells 9y ago
        And just yesterday, I was thinking no one here would need to explain who Mike Judge is to the general audience. "It's got what plants crave" is a line from his movie Idiocracy. It is directly relevant the discussion at hand, but it's also a zero-effort joke that contributes nothing new.
        phaemon 9y ago

pure-awesome 9y ago

Capetonian here as well. I'm honestly more than a little bit worried about the situation.

charlesdm 9y ago

Well, that's interesting. Are there companies that own water capacity in countries? Might be a good long term investment.

badosu 9y ago
Not sure how to interpret this statement.. One part of me is disgusted at someone profiting from bad planning and misery of others, the other thinks that this is something that really needs investing.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  I meant this in a positive, not negative way. A for-profit company, if done properly, will be able to introduce the required infrastructure where necessary. It should (theoretically at least) also be run in a better way -- if the infrastructure isn't functioning properly, no profits are being made.
  - locopati 9y ago
    that is so often not the way for-profit works in any public system (ex: prisons, electricity, garbage hauling, education)
  - pjc50 9y ago
    "if done properly", state infrastructure can do this just as well. I'd have a look at the Carillion bankruptcy before claiming that the private sector is a solution.
    - pathseeker 9y ago
      The problem is that state's aren't really motivated to get things done in a cost efficient manner. If the government in SA is like the US, employees are not rewarded for doing anything beyond the bare minimum to prove that they are still alive. In a private business, the employees have to help the business towards its goal of making money, so all of the incentives are aligned to be successful (employees want promotions and not to get fired, the investors don't want to lose money).

chesimov 9y ago

On point 4 - my understanding is that the poorest areas (which are at most risk of disease outbreaks) will not have their water cut. Rather, everyone else will have their water cut first while some water still remains in the dams, which is specifically allocated for those areas and will last long enough until the mid-year rain. I last read this a while ago though, so things may have changed.

nevi-me 9y ago
Yes, this was mentioned today in the news on one of the radio stations. It went like "the poorer communities that rely on communal taps, will not have their water cut, because they already collect water at those taps". This is sadly a travesty coming.

ilitirit 9y ago

On the first point 4, it's something that many people don't realise. Water policy in this context is set on a National level. All these Youtubers and Facebook protestors don't understand that a Municipality can't simply shut off water to farms/mines. Various approaches were already discussed prior to the Water Act of 1998: http://www.dwa.gov.za/Documents/Policies/nwpwp.pdf http://www.dwa.gov.za/Documents/Policies/nwpwp.pdf But as it says in that document - it's National Policy. The government will need to make the call. There may well be provision for disaster areas, but the government doesn't think CPT qualifies. On the second point 4, there's a already a health concern with regards to our current water supply. Cracks in pipes in the existing infrastructure allow impurities to enter our water supply. When the pipes are at full pressure this doesn't happen. However, when the pressure is dropped (as what is currently happening in various suburbs), the pressure is not enough to keep these impurities out, and you end up with a contaminated supply in some areas.

wonderwonder 9y ago

Does government corruption / incompetence come into play in making this situation worse than it should be?

SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago
> Does government corruption / incompetence come into play Of course there is a political dimension. The SA national government (ANC) is from a different party to the Cape Town local government (Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party). So there is tension between local and national governments. They try to make each other look bad. Hard to prove, it it does look like the National government is either just neglecting Cape Town or deliberately encouraging it to fail. And they are corrupt, particularly the national government, yes. https://www.biznews.com/undictated/2017/12/15/cape-town-water-crisis-anc-da/ https://www.biznews.com/undictated/2017/12/15/cape-town-wate... https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2016/12/05/sa-water-state-capture/ https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2016/12/05/sa-water-...
- igitur 9y ago
  I'm not entirely convinced that it is due to malice. Keep in mind that the Department of Water and Sanitation has been declared bankrupt, so I think it's mostly incompetence. http://ewn.co.za/2017/02/12/report-water-and-sanitation-department-bankrupt http://ewn.co.za/2017/02/12/report-water-and-sanitation-depa...
SeoxyS 9y ago
Government corruption and incompetence is 100% responsible for this, not climate change.
johndevor 9y ago
I think this is a decent summary: https://youtu.be/nOvmjs0J_QQ https://youtu.be/nOvmjs0J_QQ

logingone 9y ago

Regarding the policy being set at national level - I've seen mention of the Western Cape seceding - how realistic was that, and has this had any effect on that? I'm ex Durban/Johannesburg, abandoned the rainbow nation 20 or so years ago with zero confidence in its future, and I'm afraid it was the right call; part of me would love to return, and the WC (there's a pun there) seceding would interest me for a move there.

chesimov 9y ago
Well, there's an exodus from the rest of the country to the W. Cape. They call it 'semigration'. Property was up 12% a while ago when all other provinces saw a decline I think (except Gauteng; they were up 3%). As a young person of the wrong demographic here though, myself and most of my friends are preparing for possible departure for a few different reasons. If you are already established in a field with an overseas nest egg that can't be touched by SA inflation though, then Cape Town is probably one of the best cities to live in on the planet. If you know what you're doing, living here is fantastic.
- avn2109 9y ago
  Can you elaborate on what makes CT so good? My South African friends always say this but I can't get a straight answer out of them why it's so great.
- tonteldoos 9y ago
  The joke used to be that the WC is where you emmigrated to if you didn't want to emmigrate :)
oh_sigh 9y ago
What's the "wrong demographic"? Or..what is the right demographic?
igitur 9y ago
To answer your question, I haven't met anyone in Cape Town who takes a WC secession seriously. There is a very small political party that advocates for it, be its treated as one of the joke parties.

pixl97 9y ago

>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. Why? In already deployed networks, decreased usage means the cost per client, or the cost per unit used will go up. This is a problem with any network that charges for delivery based on usage and cannot easily cut off unused parts of the network.

opportune 9y ago
Because that shouldn't be charged after the fact, ideally it should be priced into the water prices as consumers purchase it.
- patejam 9y ago
  That's assuming pricing scales linearly. More likely, it takes a flat-ish $x to maintain the infrastructure, and the reduced usage means they can't reach that minimum $x threshold.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  To not charge it after the fact, you’d have to recoup costs much faster in the earlier years of the system existence, causing crushing water bills to exist. It’s not a policy issue, it’s an education issue.
dragonwriter 9y ago
It's also a problem with networks that bill by usage but spread both fixed and usage-variable costs across the expected usage, even if they don't have issues cutting off unused parts of the network; a sharp drop in usage underfunds the costs that aren't variable.

fossuser 9y ago

Are you looking to get out? It doesn't sound like things are trending in a good directly and water supply scarcity seems likely to cause instability and other issues. Why stay there?

Ratelman 9y ago
So my situation is I bought a house here, still paying off the bond, so selling is not really an option at the moment (haven't paid off that much and no one wants to buy a house in an area where there will be no water) Not really a situation where I can just cut my losses (buying a house is a lot of debt) and go

eisa01 9y ago

Have they rolled out smart water meters to monitor consumption and bill per liter? I would think that would be very effective and a fair way to ration the remaining water You could even have progressive rates That would also prompt people to install water saving devices

nevi-me 9y ago
The mayor has avoided answering that question on some radio shows. There's the cost of such meters, and the conspiracies that some of the water usage offenders are wealthy people who might be supporting the ruling party in the city or province. When flying into Cape Town, you still see a large number of pools that look well-maintained, which is scary. I'm convinced that some residents just quietly pay excessive water penalties, and are let off the hook. Given the Listeria breakout that's happening, and the "falling" or unprepared public health sector, it's a matter of weeks till we deal with a huge crisis. Disclaimer: I have been working in CT for a few months, fly in and out every week.

mnglkhn2 9y ago

It’s going to get worse before it gets better (if)! Your description point to infrastructure decay.

SolarNet 9y ago

On the point 3. Climate change is causing many 1/1000 and 1/100 type events to happen more often; especially as it relates to rainfall, like record droughts and monsoons. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the new normal because of that as well (which will make the population issue even worse).

czue 9y ago

Another Cape Town resident here. I've been trying to consolidate a lot of this information (and links to official sources) on http://www.capetowndrought.com http://www.capetowndrought.com. Just sharing in case helpful. :)