Johan van der Merwe, mayoral committee member for finance in the city, said they believe that a “drought charge is critical” in order to make up the shortfall of revenue in order to “increase the security of our water supply”.
“There will be a council meeting on Friday next week to consider the comments received and to determine the way forward regarding water resilience in the City of Cape Town.” He said that any decision taken at the meeting will inform the adjustment budget “that will be tabled for council for approval at the end of January 2018”.
In a statement issued by the City in November last year, taps are set to be turned off once the dams reach a level of 13.5%.
Once this happens, residents will have to collect their water supply from one of 200 water collection sites that will be spread out across the city.
These watering sites are expected to cater to an estimated 20000 people per site every day.
Dr Kevin Winter from UCT’s Environmental and Geographical Science Future Water Institute said the idea of water points are certainly a wake-up call; however, he doesn’t believe that it will reach that point.
“The City has been quite good in helping us see what the reality is.
I really don’t think we are going to go down that route."
“To be honest, I think it is going to rain, I think we will probably get through this crisis.” Winter added he doesn’t believe the City is going to run out of water as he sees them being able to manage the crisis “very carefully”.
I think it is the approach of the drought levy that caused the real issue.