For residents of Cape Town’s informal settlements, tighter water restrictions won’t make any difference, reports GroundUp.
If the City of Cape Town has to move to Phase 2 – Disaster Restrictions – of its drought response plan, some households in formal settlements will no longer have running water and will have to fetch drinking water from points of distribution (PODs).
But nothing will change for households in informal settlements, which get their water from standpipes anyway.
Phase 2 is the "Disaster Restrictions Phase", and Phase 3 the "Full-scale disaster implementation".
The Mayoral Committee Member for Informal Settlements, Water and Waste Services, and Energy, Xanthea Limberg, said that if the City moved to Phase 2, informal settlements would be prioritised.
During this phase, water collection sites or PODs will be established around the city, and some households in formal settlements will not have access to piped drinking water.
Informal settlements will continue to receive water from standpipes.
Some residents of informal settlements say the drought has made no difference to the problems they already have with access to water.
Many households share the same standpipe; there are problems with water pressure; and periods when the pipe stops functioning altogether.
According to the 2011 Census, 12% of the 1 068 572 households in the City of Cape Town received tap water from a communal stand.

ISLAMABAD: Only 36 percent of the Pakistani population on average, including 41% in urban areas and 32% rural areas, has access to safe drinking water in the country, a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) revealed.
Results of the water-quality monitoring efforts by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) indicate that 69 to 85% of collected samples of water were contaminated.
He said that the poor quality of drinking water has forced a large cross-section of citizens to buy bottled water.
As a consequence, a mushrooming of bottled water industry in the country has been witnessed during the last few years.
Many mineral/bottled water companies, however, were found selling contaminated water.
To monitor and improve the quality of bottled water, the government through Ministry of Science and Technology has designated the task to PCRWR for quarterly monitoring of bottled/mineral water brands and publicise the results.
According to the monitoring report for the quarter from July to September, 2017, 104 samples of mineral/bottled water brands have been collected from Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Sialkot, Peshawar, Multan, Lahore, Quetta, Bahawalpur, Tandojam, Karachi and Muzaffarabad.
Comparison of analytical findings with permissible limits of Pakistan Standards & Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) has revealed that 9 brands were found to be unsafe due to chemical and microbiological contaminations.
Excessive level of arsenic can cause various types of skin diseases, diabetes, kidney diseases, hypertension, heart diseases birth defects, black foot diseases and multiple types of cancers etc.
The rest were found to be unsafe due to microbiological contamination which may cause cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis, typhoid, etc.

If the City of Cape Town has to move to Phase 2 – Disaster Restrictions – of its drought response plan, some households in formal settlements will no longer have running water and will have to fetch drinking water from "points of distribution".
But nothing will change for households in informal settlements, which get their water from standpipes anyway.
Phase 2 is the "Disaster Restrictions Phase", and Phase 3 the "Full-scale disaster implementation".
The Mayoral Committee Member for Informal Settlements, Water and Waste Services, and Energy, Xanthea Limberg, said that if the City moved to Phase 2, informal settlements would be prioritised.
During this phase, water collection sites or Points of Distribution (PODs) will be established around the city, and some households in formal settlements will not have access to piped drinking water.
Informal settlements will continue to receive water from standpipes.
This means the water reticulation network will continue to supply informal settlements but, in the general case, residents in formal residential areas will need to collect water from PODs."
Residents of informal settlements say the drought has made no difference to the problems they already have with access to water.
Many households share the same standpipe; there are problems with water pressure; and periods when the pipe stops functioning altogether.
According to the 2011 Census, 12% of the 1,068,572 households in the City of Cape Town received tap water from a communal stand.

(Photo courtesy of Mick Shea) Libby Rotarians are at the forefront of a collaborative humanitarian project in Guatemala that is providing one of life’s basic needs — clean water.
The Rotary Club of the Kootenai Valley has been involved in helping communities in the Central America country get access to clean water since Libby Rotarian George Gerard got the ball rolling in 2006.
“What’s gratifying is the people; they’re so appreciative.” Gerard and fellow Libby Rotarian Mick Shea, along with Sandy Carlson of the Kalispell Daybreak Rotary Club and Pat Murtagh with Engineers Without Borders recently returned from a trip to Guatemala to gather the final information and documentation needed for the Rotary International grant application for the Guatemala coalition’s water project for the community of El Progreso.
Eight Rotary clubs in Northwest Montana, along with the Missoula Sunrise Rotary Club, pool their financial resources to help fund the Guatemala water projects, Gerard explained.
Rotarians in Northwest Montana work in tandem with Rotarians of the Mazatenango Club on water projects that have been completed through the years.
“The way Rotary operates, before a Rotary club in the U.S. can go into a country to do any work, you need to be invited by another Rotary club, a host club,” Shea explained.
Later in the week they met with leaders of the community of Pezac and the organization Fundazucar, and with the townspeople of La Vega, home of a future water project.
Shea, who has traveled to Guatemala seven times for Rotary projects, said there’s a great need for clean water in many parts of the country, particularly in rural villages.
Most villages simply don’t have the money to cover the cost of materials, design and engineering work and the skilled labor for building the concrete water tanks, he added.
While many of the projects have been completed in mountainous terrain, the Rotarians now are working in Guatemala’s coastal plains, helping to provide funding for new water wells.

Experts blame poor crop choices, growing populations and climate change for the water shortages in towns like Zagora, which saw repeated protests for access to clean water last month.
The shortage of drinking water pushed the impoverished inhabitants of the Zagora region to demonstrate in an unusual outbreak of anger.
Twenty-three people were arrested following confrontations with police, and eight were handed sentences last week of two to four months in prison.
Moroccan Prime Minister Saadeddine El Othmani made an exceptional public apology during a Parliament session Monday.
"I apologize publicly to the people of Zagora, because it’s the state’s responsibility," he said, promising to solve the problem.
Persistent drought in recent years has reduced farm-dependent Morocco’s gross domestic product.
The government is concerned that the issue of water is becoming a threat to national stability in the kingdom, seen as a steady force in a restive region and key ally with the West in the fight against terrorism.
Although water supplies have been restored in Zagora in recent days, residents complain about its poor quality.
With a consumption of 7 million cubic meters of water per year, according to a study by the regional hydraulic basin agency, "the watermelon greatly contributed to the water stress in the region," said Jamal Akchbab, president of the Association of Friends of the Environment in Zagora.
The drought in Morocco has pushed rural people toward the city each year.

PERTH’S drinking water catchment has been polluted by waste stockpiles right under the nose of the State’s environmental watchdog, which was “closely monitoring” activities at the Oakford site.
Groundwater tests have confirmed elevated concentrations of nitrates, heavy metals and perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
The tested area, 36km south of the city, is partly within the Jandakot Underground Water Pollution Control Area.
The regulator has already been castigated for its failure to monitor the business properly in the past.
The business received at least 87 million litres of unauthorised industrial liquid wastes — 76 million litres in 2011-2013 alone.
This was tipped on to compost and an unknown quantity seeped into the ground.
Bio-Organics had been licensed in 2002 to operate a composting facility, taking green waste only.
But, to the dismay of neighbours and the Shire of Serpentine Jarrahdale, it grew into a liquid waste dump, with locals complaining of putrid odours, nausea, headaches and burning eyes.
But the latest groundwater investigation found otherwise.
DWER is likely to classify the site as “possibly contaminated — investigation required” this month.

Hundreds of New York American Water Co. customers angry at high water bills rallied in Glen Head on Saturday, calling for a public takeover of the Merrick-based company.
Public water!
Agatha Nadel, an organizer of the protest, displayed a cardboard blowup of her latest monthly water bill, for $607.07.
“Having affordable water is not a choice,” she told the crowd.
There have been previous protests over the past several months against New York American, but the push for a public takeover of the private company — a subsidiary of New Jersey-based American Water — has intensified in recent weeks, as residents have concluded it’s the only option to ensure rates are comparable to the much lower amounts in neighboring public water districts, Nadel said.
Andrew M. Cuomo to either create a new water district or merge the New York American service areas into existing, neighboring public districts.
Supervisor Joseph Saladino, who spoke at the rally and is up for election to a first full term on Tuesday, said afterward that attorneys with the town are examining that option, as well as the option of the state creating public water districts.
Why is a company making a profit off of our basic human right?” Glen Head resident Sandra Nightingale, 46, supports a public takeover.
She said her family has stopped using lawn sprinklers and even travels to a Laundromat to wash clothes, because she said it’s cheaper than using their home’s water.
“I feel like our hands are tied,” she said.

The DEQ is requesting is Wolverine provide “immediate access to safe drinking water” to all residents; identify all contamination sites, characterize the nature and extent of contamination in the Rockford area and work with health care experts to “ensure that residents in the impacted areas have access to appropriate health care resources to monitor health implications.” The state said tests show 22 homes around Wolverine’s former House Street NE dump with well water above the EPA’s advisory limit of 70 parts per trillion of PFAS.
Many more have tested with lower levels of the chemical.
The state says it is investigating 57 possible dump sites in the Rockford area.
Wolverine already is installing whole-house filters to more than 338 homes around the House Street dump.
Plainfield Township is making plans to extend municipal water to the area, but Wolverine hasn’t said whether it will pay for it.
The state is asking Wolverine to develop a plan by Nov. 27 to determine how far the contamination has spread from the House Street dump.
It wants Wolverine’s plans for installing monitoring wells on state Department of Transportation property on House Street where workers recently cleaned up mounds of Wolverine pigskin scraps and rusty barrels.
The state also is demanding monitoring wells in the right-of-way along US-131, which borders the House Street dump, and to determine the impact on the nearby Rogue River.
The tannery closed in 2010, but residents have complained about scraps of pigskin along the banks of the Rogue River.
Websites with additional information on the contamination:

Irmo, SC (WLTX) – News19 is on your side as we’ve been looking into brown drinking water in one Midlands neighborhood.
We took water samples from before and after the flushing to Access Analytical’s environmental testing facility.
"We tested the samples for iron, manganese, and solids," said Access Analytical owner Ashley Amick.
The pre-flush sample had an iron level of 435 micrograms.
The EPA recommended level for Iron is 300 micrograms.
The pre-flush sample for manganese revealed 849 micrograms, the recommended level is only 50 micrograms.
The sample from after the flushing was much better in color, and had appropriate iron levels down to 82 micrograms.
Robert Yanity, a spokesperson for Utilities Inc., says the status of the neighborhood’s brown water is not acceptable for them, and that they are looking into interconnecting with the city of Columbia’s water system.
Yanity says they are already getting the ball rolling.
Yanity says the interconnection would be a long process, and they do not yet have a timeline on when that may happen.

Libby Rotarians are at the forefront of a collaborative humanitarian project in Guatemala that is providing one of life’s basic needs — clean water.
The Rotary Club of the Kootenai Valley has been involved in helping communities in the Central America country get access to clean water since Libby Rotarian George Gerard got the ball rolling in 2006.
“It’s been quite a learning process,” Gerard said.
Eight Rotary clubs in Northwest Montana, along with the Missoula Sunrise Rotary Club, pool their financial resources to help fund the Guatemala water projects, Gerard explained.
“We’ve taken the lead in grant writing,” he added about the Libby area Rotarians.
Rotarians in Northwest Montana work in tandem with Rotarians of the Mazatenango Club on water projects that have been completed through the years.
“The way Rotary operates, before a Rotary club in the U.S. can go into a country to do any work, you need to be invited by another Rotary club, a host club,” Shea explained.
Later in the week they met with leaders of the community of Pezac and the organization Fundazucar, and with the townspeople of La Vega, home of a future water project.
Shea, who has traveled to Guatemala seven times for Rotary projects, said there’s a great need for clean water in many parts of the country, particularly in rural villages.
While many of the projects have been completed in mountainous terrain, the Rotarians now are working in Guatemala’s coastal plains, helping to provide funding for new water wells.