South African officials are currently planning for ‘Day Zero’ – when they will be forced to turn off the water supplying Cape Town and instead give residents rationed amounts.
Ian Wright, a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science at Western Sydney University, singled out Perth as a prime example of a city at risk – arguing the metropolis had “strong parallels” with the situation in Cape Town He said: “Australia’s largest cities have often struggled with drought.
“Water supplies may decline further due to climate change and uncertain future rainfall.
“Perth is half the size of Cape Town, with two million residents, but has endured increasing water stress for nearly 50 years.
“Inflows have since shrunk by nearly 90 percent to just 42GL a year from 2010-2016.
“Australia’s fourth-largest city had the fastest capital city population growth, 28.2 percent, from 2006-2016.
“As a result, Perth became Australia’s first capital city unable to supply its residents from storage dams fed by rainfall and river flows.” South Africa has declared its current drought is a “natural disaster” as the nation desperately attempts to combat the horrifying prospect of “Day Zero”.
The government announced that it had elevated the level of the crisis to a “natural disaster” after a reevaluation of its “magnitude and severity”.
The region saw much-needed rain fall over the weekend but it did not fall for long enough to alter the course of the crisis.
The start of the month saw each resident’s allowance of water dramatically cut from 87 litres a day to 50 litres.