Water use was (and still is) restricted to 50 litres per person per day.
“It was the most talked about thing in Cape Town for months when it needed to be,” says Priya Reddy, the city’s communication director.
“It was not a pretty solution, but it was not a pretty problem.” Cape Town’s water use dropped from 600m litres per day in mid 2017 to 507m litres per day at the end of April.
The Western Cape’s multi-pronged response to its water crisis – from farming innovations to reducing urban water use to diversifying water supply sources – could serve as a blueprint for cities that find themselves, like Cape Town, looking at near-empty dams.
“We have pushed the limits far more than most other cities,” says Deputy Mayor Ian Neilson, who is in charge of the city’s water crisis response.
“This is the one that makes me the most depressed,” says Derick van Zyl pointing to a long row of parched trees in his apple orchard.
Esperanto is one of hundreds of fruit farms in South Africa’s Western Cape province that has had to get creative to cope with the drought.
Neilson, the deputy mayor, says the decision to call off Day Zero came down to transparency.
Though Day Zero is out of the immediate picture, the major dams that supply water to the Western Cape are still only about 20% full.
“When somebody first tells you about it, you think it’s a crazy idea,” says Nick Sloane, a ship salvager who has been pitching the idea of the iceberg plan.