The City of Cape Town is currently in Phase 1, with water rationing through extreme pressure reduction. If rationing and savings are not successful, we risk entering Phase 2, which is a disaster stage followed by Phase 3, the extreme disaster phase, where the city would be incapable of drawing water from its surface dams.
Today, as part of our regular updates on the drought crisis, I am announcing key aspects of the City of Cape Town’s Critical Water Shortages Disaster Plan.
If consumption is not reduced to the required levels of 500-million litres of collective usage per day, we are looking at about March 2018 when supply of municipal water would not be available.
In terms of our Water Resilience Plan to augment supply with new schemes, we are expecting the first water to come online by approximately December 2017/January 2018 if all goes according to plan.
In terms of our Critical Water Shortages Disaster Plan, as with all parts of our operations, we have a disaster plan for all eventualities as every organisation does as part of risk management.
We ask water users to store up to five litres of municipal drinking water only for essential usage.
The difference between Phases 1 and 2 is that in Phase 1 we are rationing the whole system with reduced supply.
This extreme can only be avoided if we all do what we need to do now to save water.
It is therefore necessary that the city and its residents and stakeholders plan for such a situation if it were to occur.